Sir Stanley Spencer R.A.

Commissioned in 1929 by the Empire Marketing Board
HM Treasury, where acquired by Sir Edward Beddington-Behrens in the mid-1930s for £300.0.0
His Sale, Sotheby's London, 6th April 1960, lot 99 (as The Design Class), where acquired by Wilfrid A. Evill for £500.0.0, by whom bequeathed to Honor Frost in 1963

London, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Pictures, Drawings, Water Colours and Sculpture, April - May 1961, (part IV- section 4) cat. no.11 (as Cutting the Cloth);
Worthing, Worthing Art Gallery, Sir Stanley Spencer, R.A., 9th September - 7th October 1961, cat. no.9; 
Brighton, Brighton Art Gallery, The Wilfrid Evill Memorial Exhibition, June - August 1965, cat. no.202;
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Stanley Spencer RA, 20th September - 14th December 1980, cat. nos.125, 126 and 127, illustrated pp.116-7;
London, Christie's, New English Art Club Centenary Exhibition, 27th August - 17th September 1986, cat. no.151.

Keith Bell, A Complete Catalogue of Paintings, London, Phaidon, 1992, cat. no.128b, 128c and 128d, illustrated pp.418-9.

The colours, notably the whites are much brighter, richer, more vibrant and less yellow and brown than the printed catalogue suggests. The following condition report has been prepared by Hamish Dewar, Fine Art Conservation, 13 & 14 Mason's Yard, Duke Street, St James's, London, SW1Y 6BU: UNCONDITIONAL AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE Structure The three panels of the triptych are on keyed wooden stretchers, each with one horizontal stretcher-bar. The structural condition of all three panels is sound and stable. Paint surface The paint surfaces of all three panels all have discoloured and uneven varnish layers would undoubtedly be significantly enhanced by cleaning. I would be very confident of an improvement in the overall appearance. The discoloured varnish layers are most evident in the white pigments of the cloths in the central panel. The left side panel has a small repair on the reverse which corresponds to a paint loss on the hook of the left arm of the hatstand. The loss measures approximately 2 cm in length and could be simply repaired, filled and retouched. There are many small brush hairs within the varnish layers on the left panel which could be removed during the cleaning process. There are pin holes in the corners of all three panels. Summary The three panels all therefore appear to be in very good and stable condition and should benefit considerably from cleaning and revarnishing.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Originally conceived as part of a five part frieze as a commission to be reproduced as posters for the Empire Marketing Board on a theme of 'industry',  the three central panels are now known as Cutting the Cloth, although this is correctly the title only of the right hand panel. Never published as intended by the EMB, the paintings languished in a government store into the 1930s when they were purchased by Edward Beddington-Behrens who repaid the Treasury the £300 Spencer had received for the commission. They then appear to have been on loan to the Tate Gallery until around 1945, with the present three panels framed as one, and the outer panels framed separately. Although some authorities suggest that Evill acquired them earlier, in fact he purchased these three panels together as one lot in Sotheby's sale of 6^th November 1960 when they were offered, along with the other two large panels, as the property of Sir Edward Beddington-Behrens.

Spencer intended that the whole scheme would form a panoramic view of people involved in a variety of forms of work and craft, and thus using a sense of diligent application as his interpretation of 'industry', the setting changing across the image. The outer panels, The Art Class (Private Collection) and The Garage (fig. 1, Private Collection), extended the setting even further, and the huge range of occupation in the composition is clear.

The central panel, correctly titled The Anthracite Stove, is a true hive of activity, with figures sewing, sorting, drawing and doing a host of other tasks. Based loosely on the Village Hall at Steep, the image develops to the left into a hallway, perhaps based on memories of the hallway of Fernlea, where new arrivals hang up their caps, and to the right becoming a haberdasher's shop where long swathes of cloth sweep across the painting. The warmth and light of the stove is the hub around which the composition moves, and indeed one of the figures has clearly come in from The Garage for a quick warm of the hands. In a sea of comfortable chairs, and around the tables in the centre of the room a large number of figures are engaged in a variety of pursuits as varied as embroidery, technical drawing, sorting of papers or simply having a home-made sandwich from a brown paper bag. As a reminder that these paintings were produced in a seven week break from his work at the Sandham Memorial Chapel, one of the figures appears to be an escapee from the Burghclere images, a soldier who carves a memorial cross, perhaps for a fallen comrade.    

Spencer felt very moved by the way in which workers of all types humanised their environments, even the most inhospitable, and the sense of shared manual industry within a communal space is clear in all these paintings. Such themes were to come to the fore again in the Shipbuilding on the Clyde series, painted during WWII.

As with virtually all Spencer's work, such feelings were drawn from his own experience, and the Cutting the Cloth panel also shows a very similar feeling to the many images of shops that Spencer produced throughout his career, such as The Glove Shop of 1959 (Private Collection), The Sausage Shop of 1951 (Newport Museum and Art Gallery) or The Woolshop of 1939 (Tate, London), and both of the further panels of this composition show similar sources. The Art Class must hark back to his own time in the at the Slade and family music-making sessions, with The Garage reflecting perhaps his recent acquisition of a car and thus visits to a local workshop.