Stanley Spencer Still-life Drawings and Watercolors

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...