Researching Stanley Spencer

As his career progressed Spencer often produced landscapes for commercial necessity and the intensity of his early visionary years diminished somewhat while elements of eccentricity came more to the fore. Although his compositions became more claustrophobic and his use of colour less vivid he maintained an attention to detail in his paintings akin to that of the Pre-Raphaelites. Spencer's works often express his fervent if unconventional Christian faith. This is especially evident in the scenes that he based in Cookham which show the compassion that he felt for his fellow residents and also his romantic and sexual obsessions. Spencer's works originally provoked great shock and controversy. Nowadays, they still seem stylistic and experimental, while the nude works depicting his futile relationship with his second wife, Patricia Preece, such as the Leg of mutton nude, foreshadow some of the much later works of Lucian Freud. Spencer's early work is regarded as a synthesis of French Post-Impressionism, exemplified for instance by Paul Gauguin, plus early Italian painting typified by Giotto. In later life Spencer remained an independent artist and did not join any of the artistic movements of the period, although he did show three works at the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912.__TOC__

Stanley's family had a history of flying: all his five siblings were also aeronauts, with Arthur and Percival the more well-known; his father Charles Green Spencer pioneered gliding and founded the balloon factory C.G. Spencer & Sons in London; and his grandfather Edward had flown balloons with Charles Green since 1836. On 15 September 1898, Stanley piloted a hydrogen balloon for the meteorologist Arthur Berson in what was believed to be a record ascent to 27,500 feet. On 15 November 1899, Spencer ascended with John Mackenzie Bacon and Gertrude Bacon to observe the Leonid meteor shower from above the clouds. Ten hours later, their balloon landed near Neath, South Wales, narrowly avoiding drifting out over the Atlantic.