Lot 143: SIR STANLEY SPENCER R.A.

SIR STANLEY SPENCER R.A. 1891-1959 HILDA WITH BLUEBELLS oil on canvas 51 by 61cm.; 20 by 24in. Executed in 1955.

Brighton, Brighton Art Gallery, The Wilfrid Evill Memorial Exhibition, June - August 1965, cat. no.197 (as In the Woods- Hilda Picking Blue Bells);
London, Royal Academy, Stanley Spencer RA, 20th September -14th December 1980, cat. no.268, illustrated p.220;
Cookham, Stanley Spencer Gallery, Images of Hilda Spencer, Summer 1985, cat. no.33.

Stanley Spencer, documentary directed by David Rowan, Arbor Films/Arts Council of Great Britain, 1979;
Keith Bell, Stanley Spencer: A Complete Catalogue of Paintings, Phaidon, London, 1992, cat. no.402, illustrated p.354-5.

Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, where acquired by Wilfrid A. Evill, by whom bequeathed to Honor Frost in 1963

Painted in 1955, the present work looks back to the earliest years of the artist's relationship with his first wife, Hilda Carline, and sees Spencer creating an image which draws on their courtship in and around Hampstead, Hilda's home.

Although Spencer had painted and drawn Hilda many times before, virtually as soon as Hilda and Spencer separated in 1935, she became an almost constant feature in his work, sometimes appearing in the domestic harmony and intimacy of Hilda and Stanley figures engaged in everyday tasks such as choosing clothes, opening drawers or putting on shoes, in other pictures becoming the Hilda-presence who is worshipped, adored or chosen by Spencer, sometimes clearly recognisable, at others just exhibiting Hilda-like qualities but always there. As the years pass, even figures that have no obvious Hilda characteristics are seen by Spencer as exhibiting elements of Hilda or their relationship as Spencer wanted to see them. After Hilda died in 1950 there was no change to this presentation of her, although he more and more reflected on the early years of their relationship. Here we see Stanley and Hilda out for a walk on Hampstead Heath, the bluebells suggesting that it is spring. Both sit on the grass, Hilda captivated by the flowers before her, Stanley distracted by something away to our left. In a number of Spencer's landscape and garden paintings the foreground flowers can appear oversized, helping to throw the space beyond into deep recession, such as is seen in Magnolia (Private Collection) of 1938. By using this device here, Hilda, in her green striped dress and tilted head almost begins to mirror the flowers, and thus becoming ever more closely wound into Spencer's memory of the place. This deep association of a specific place and a person had been used by Spencer earlier in some of his earlier paintings of Patricia, such as Patricia at Cockmarsh Hill (Private Collection) of 1935, and this melding of differing elements of a composition often gives an additional poignancy to the painting.

Like much of Spencer's best later work, his ability to step lightly from recalled time to another is to be marvelled at, and here, as in Hilda and I at Pond Street (Private Collection) of 1954, Spencer presents himself and Hilda in forms quite different from their real ages at the time he is depicting. When they began courting in the early 1920s, Spencer was already thirty and Hilda two years older, yet he presents himself as a much younger figure, perhaps just a teenager, whilst the figure of Hilda is somewhat older. Spencer often depicted himself in his paintings as younger, smaller and rather dependent on the women in his life, their presence protecting the diminutive Stanley, yet his pose here has an air of watchfulness about it, as though this position has been reversed and now he is guarding Hilda whilst she absorbs herself in the flowers before her.

Two studies for the present work appeared in Christie's Stanley Spencer Studio Sale, 5th November 1998, lot 231.