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Newsletter Summer 2020 Newsletter Summer 2020 President: Dr James Fox Vice-president: Miss Shirin Spencer An organisation within the Stanley Spencer Memorial Fund, registered charity no 307989 Patron: Lord Richard Harries of Pentregarth, formerly Bishop of Oxford LOVE, ART, LOSS: The Wives of Stanley Spencer Summer 2020 exhibition extended through to October 2021 It was a real shame not to be able to open our new Detail: Self- summer exhibition as scheduled in late March. Portrait, However, the Trustees have agreed to extend the Hilda Carline exhibition through to the end of October 2021, so 1923, our visitors will not be disappointed. Tate Thanks to Peter Brown and undoubtedly difficult), but we’ve tried to look at Clare Mitchell, amongst the whole picture, discovering that his others, the Gallery has relationship with Hilda – Patricia aside – was been repainted a luscious fraught with problems. red, the loans have been received and the We’ve got three loans coming from Southampton exhibition is ready to open (Portrait of Patricia Preece), and Tate (The as soon as permissible. Woolshop and Hilda Carline’s Self-Portrait). I’m particularly looking forward to seeing Hilda’s I think many of us are very portrait paired with Stanley’s of the same date familiar with Stanley’s (1923) – an art historical conversation that will unconventional love life, work on many levels! Patricia at Cockmarsh Hill, but I hope that this show Amanda Bradley 1935 The Gallery’s reopening date will be confirmed might put a slightly different spin on the subject. when we have clear guidance from the Stanley’s life and work were dominated by his authorities. New safety measures will include: relationships with his two wives, Hilda Carline and restricted visitor numbers to allow for social Patricia Preece. The slow but devastating distancing; a one-way system; hand sanitisers; breakdown of his first marriage and the immediate a protective screen for the custodians’ desk and but no less devastating collapse of the second contactless payment. We ask for your patience must be one of the most compelling art historical and hope to welcome visitors again very soon. stories of modern times. Stanley has often been Check our website for the latest information: cast as the demon in this story (and he was www.stanleyspencer.org.uk Hon. Secretary: Sue Mahoney, 7 Sleekstone Cottages, Grange Road, Cookham, Berks SL6 9TG. Email: [email protected] Page 2 SummerJune 2020 2014 June 2014 The Trustee RAB Isn’t insurance for the This is the second in a series of articles in which pictures on loan Dick Brealey meets some of the people who prohibitively keep the Stanley Spencer Gallery going. Here expensive? he talks to Peter Brown in the Gallery, where Peter Insurance of they are surrounded by paintings that are being the Gallery’s assembled for the planned summer exhibition, collection is our “Love, Art, Loss.” major expense. RAB Peter, as a Trustee of the Gallery, you are Fortunately in the obviously involved in major policy decisions, but you also have the prime responsibility for case of loans, we Peter Brown the Gallery’s buildings and security. What does can take advantage of the Government Indemnity this entail when there is a new exhibition? Scheme, but we need to demonstrate that we Peter The first step is to decide on a colour look after the works properly. Amongst other scheme for the Gallery. That involves quite a bit things, we need to keep the Gallery at a constant of experimentation and discussion. For “Love, 200C and 50% humidity. Art, Loss” we settled on the brick-red colour RAB How does anyone know whether we do so? that you can now see and that matches the Peter Our major lenders and the GIS want to see posters and other material for the exhibition. regular statistics on this. Fortunately, we actually RAB Obviously, many of the pictures in the do rather better on maintaining the environment exhibition come from our own collection, but than some major galleries. these ones in packing cases are on loan from RAB What about the lighting? It always seems a other galleries. What does this involve? bit dim in here. Peter The curator, in this case Amanda Bradley, Peter Again there are standards for the negotiates the loan, and then Clare Mitchell, the appropriate level of lighting and we can control Gallery registrar, arranges the transportation the lights on each picture. Drawings need a lower and insurance. Once the pictures arrive, Clare level of lighting than oil paintings. checks the paintings against the lender’s RAB I can imagine that all this takes quite a bit “condition report.” To help decide exactly where of monitoring. What about the rest of the each one needs to be displayed, the exhibition building? team uses software that allows us to take a Peter Well, before the exhibition opens, we need virtual tour of the exhibition area. We can then to make sure that the till is working and updated, get on with the job of hanging the pictures. that the lift and the security systems on the RAB Once you have hung the pictures, are you doors are all working, and so on. Covid-19 worried that some visitor may take a fancy to means that when we are allowed to open again, one of them and smuggle it out when the we will also have some new challenges. We have custodian is not looking? started to work on plans to keep our volunteers Peter I don’t want to go into details of our and everyone coming to the Gallery safe. security systems, but you can be assured that RAB Peter, you are always described as the we have comprehensive security measures in indispensable person to whom everyone comes place and that they have to meet the conditions when something needs to be done. I am required by Arts Council England. beginning to see why. Thank you. Hon. Secretary: Sue Mahoney, 7 Sleekstone Cottages, Grange Road, Cookham, Berks SL6 9TG. Email: [email protected] Summer 2020 Page 3 News from Sandham Memorial Chapel The year got off to a busy start at Sandham with our project to replace the facings on the chapel doors (right). Protective facings were added to the original doors in the late 1950s but these facings had deteriorated, leaving us with serious issues of draught and water ingress. In early January, the doors were removed and During lockdown we continue with essential tasks transported to a conservation workshop in to keep the chapel safe and compliant; gardening Southampton, with temporary doors installed in is reduced to minimal mowing and weeding and the their place. The removal of the 1957 facings gave us orchard meadow is awash with wildflowers. We’ve the opportunity to see the fronts of the doors for also taken the opportunity to complete a brief the first time in over 60 years. history of the chapel for our website. We are hoping to add images from the Gallery archive, and thanks New facings were handcrafted from English oak to a are due to Ann Danks for her help and advice. design more closely matching the original doors. Once they had been fitted, the doors were ready to For more details, visit our website return to Burghclere in early February. The new oak www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sandham-memorial- is a very different colour to that of its predecessors, chapel. Keep safe and well; we look forward to but with minimal treatment the oak will age and welcoming visitors back to Sandham very soon. colour over time. Paul Grist, Property Operations Manager Curate your own Spencer show This enables us to promote Stanley and his work to a wider public and encourage them to visit our Have you ever wondered what curating an Gallery, and other galleries exhibiting his work, to exhibition might be like? Do you have paintings see the actual paintings when it is safe to do so. by Stanley that you love and would like to share Creating an exhibition is easy. You simply create with others? If you do, you now have a chance to an account, select the images from the Art UK do so from the safety of your own home. website and add some text if you wish. The Art UK is a charity that has digitised paintings in painting and text then get included in your every UK public collection and published them on exhibition. Their web site is its website so we can all enjoy them. They have https://artuk.org/discover/discover just launched a project which enables us all to Once on that page, click on ‘Discover Curations’ > select the paintings we love and put them into Search Curations >type in ‘Stanley Spencer’ and a our own exhibition on their website. When a draft exhibition curated by Ann Danks (now along visitor to their site searches for ‘Stanley Spencer’, with three others) will appear. To create your own all the exhibitions our custodians and friends exhibition, go to https://artuk.org/discover/curations have created will be offered to them to view. Dennis Jeffrey Hon. Secretary: Sue Mahoney, 7 Sleekstone Cottages, Grange Road, Cookham, Berks SL6 9TG. Email: [email protected] Page 4 Summer 2020 New faces and new roles on the remembers as a child making Friends’ committee family visits to the village and to the Stanley Spencer Gallery. Our third new committee We are very sorry to say goodbye to three of our member is Trevor Knight. long-serving committee members. Brian Schirn Trevor discovered the Gallery has been a member of the committee since 2005.
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    1 Stanley Spencer in Leonard Stanley By Peter Hill Stanley Spencer arrived in Leonard Stanley in July 1939. He was 48. He was already an accomplished painter with a national reputation, and in the year he came to the village he painted himself very much in the pose of an artist. It is a mirror image, since he painted with his right hand. Self-portrait 1939 He had studied before the First World War at the Slade, where he had met a host of contemporary painters. He had also seen war at close hand. He served in the RAMC, principally in Salonica in Northern Greece, which inspired a group of paintings. He had married Hilda Carline, and had two daughters, but the marriage led to a divorce in May 1937, when he immediately married Patricia Preece. She, however, was a lesbian, with whom he never consummated his marriage; on their honeymoon night she went off to Cornwall with her girlfriend Dorothy. He painted a famous picture of the two of them naked on the floor with a leg of mutton in the foreground, perhaps to emphasise that we are all flesh. And he used her as a model for several other very fleshy nudes. 2 Patricia Preece-nude So by the late thirties his life was a mess. He’d had two failed marriages, he was short of money, and he had nowhere to live, after making over his house in Cookham to Patricia. His agent Dudley Tooth took over the management of his finances. It is no wonder that in 1938, at the urgings of his agent, he painted no fewer than 31 landscapes, which Tooth could sell; the following year, during which war broke out, he only did six, and in 1940, whilst he was in Gloucestershire, the number reduced to four.
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