Stanley Spencer

Stanley Spencer drawing 'Hilda naming butterflies', 20th Century British

Stanley Spencer (British, 1891-1959) Study for The Apotheosis of Hilda Pencil 19.3/4 x 30 in. (50 x 76 cm.) Provenance: Christie’s South Kensington, Stanley Spencer studio sale, 1998...

Jean Dupas (French, 1882 – 1964) The angel of light Pen and ink and charcoal on paper 14.3/4 x 12.1/2 in. (37.5 x 31.8 cm.) One of the leading artists of the Art Deco period, Jean Théodore Dupas was the son of a merchant marine captain and began his adult life as a merchant seaman. Poor health meant that he had to abandon this career and he enrolled in art school instead, first in his native Bordeaux and later in Paris. He won the Prix de Rome in the category of painting in 1910 and studied at the Académie de France in Rome, from where he sent several paintings to the Paris Salons, although his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of war. Dupas’s work came to public prominence on the occasion of the seminal Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1925. He was chosen by the furniture designer Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann to provide paintings for the latter’s Maison d’un collectionneur, alongside furniture by Ruhlmann and objects by many of the leading Art Deco craftsmen of the day, while other paintings by Dupas were also displayed to great effect elsewhere in the Exposition. In the late 1920’s and 1930’s Dupas won a number of important and prestigious commissions. In 1926 he worked alongside Ruhlmann and the sculptor Alfred Jeanniot on the decoration of the tearoom of the ocean liner Ile-de-France; the first of the grand transatlantic ships to be built in France after the First World War. By this time Dupas had firmly established his reputation. Writing in 1927, his fellow artist George Barbier could already note that ‘Few artists have at such an early age attained such a degree of success, or gathered around them such swarms of imitators and disciples.’ Dupas reached the height of his fame in the mid 1930’s, and in 1934 he received his most important commission to date; a series of large glass murals...

Study for Going to Bed Drawing, Pencil on Paper by Stanley Spencer, 1935 Additional information: Medium: Drawing, Pencil on Paper 54.6 x 63.5 cm 21 1/2 x 25 in This is a study for a painting featured in Spencer’s nine picture series, ‘Domestic Scenes’ (1935), throughout which the artist nostalgically reflected on and reimagined the marriage to his then-wife, Hilda Carline, following their separation after ten years together. Indeed, letters show that Hilda began divorce proceedings while the series was being produced, in part owing to Spencer’s infatuation with young artist Patricia Preece, who lived in Cookham alongside her partner Dorothy Hepworth. Spencer married Preece a week after the divorce was finalized, but the marriage was disastrous and his subsequent endeavors to reconcile with Hilda were also unsuccessful, although he did continue to visit her regularly until her death in 1950. Spencer saw the Domestic Scenes series as preparation for his 1953 painting ‘The Marriage of Cana’, a depiction of Christ’s first miracle, the turning of water into wine as described in St John’s Gospel, with the bride and groom reimagined as Stanley and Hilda. This study has been exhibited widely, including at the opening exhibition of the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham in 1962 and in the Royal Academy’s 1980 retrospective ‘Stanley Spencer: RA’. The completed painting, ‘Domestic Scenes: Going to Bed’ (1936) was included in the Barbican Art Gallery’s 1991 exhibition ‘Stanley Spencer: The Apotheosis of Love’, curated by John Toole...

Apple and Butterfly is an original Contemporary artwork realized in 1970 ca. by the Italian Contemporary artist Leo Guida (1992 - 2017). Original drawing in pencil on ivory-colore...