Lot 145: SIR STANLEY SPENCER R.A.

SIR STANLEY SPENCER R.A. 1891-1959 PORTRAIT OF HILDA oil on canvas 46 by 36cm.; 18 by 14¼in. Executed in 1949.

London, Arthur Tooth & Sons, Stanley Spencer: an Exhibition of Recent Landscapes, Portraits, and Flower Paintings, May 1950, cat. no.4 (as Hilda);
Hampstead, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Catalogue of the Greater Portion of a Collection of Modern English Paintings, Water Colours, Drawings and Sculpture Belonging to W. A. Evill, March 1955, cat. no.26 (as Portrait of Mrs. Hilda Spencer);
London, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Pictures, Drawings, Water Colours and Sculpture, April - May 1961, (part II- section 2) cat. no.7;
Worthing, Worthing Art Gallery, Sir Stanley Spencer R.A., 9th September - 7th October 1961, cat. no.31;
Brighton, Brighton Art Gallery, The Wilfrid Evill Memorial Exhibition, June - August 1965, cat. no.196.

Keith Bell, Stanley Spencer: A Complete Catalogue of Paintings, Phaidon, London, 1992, cat. no.346, illustrated p.344.

Arthur Tooth & Sons, London (as Hilda), where acquired by Wilfrid A. Evill June 1950 for £100.0.0, by whom bequeathed to Honor Frost in 1963

The last portrait of Hilda that Spencer was to paint whilst she was alive, this was probably produced during sittings at 17, Pond Street, the Carline's Hampstead home.

Quite shattering in its intensity of observation, this painting is an intensely moving evocation of the relationship between Hilda and Stanley that had ebbed and flowed so much over the previous three decades. From the idealism and hope of their earliest years, through the tribulations and divorce of the 1930s to Hilda's illnesses during the 1940s, Stanley never lost sight of his love for Hilda, and she remained the central most important figure in his life. Spencer's destructive passion for Patricia Preece deeply hurt Hilda and undermined her confidence to a substantial level, yet she nearly always saw the better side of Stanley. In a remarkable note written just before her death to Spencer's dealer Dudley Tooth, Hilda wrote:

'Being with Stanley is like being with a holy person, one who perceives. It isn't that he is consciously or intentionally good or bad, or intentionally anything, for he is the thing so many strive for and he has only to be.' (HS to Dudley Tooth, TGA 733.1.1730)The close, almost uncomfortably close, viewpoint means that Hilda dominates her surroundings, indeed it is only after some inspection that the details of the furniture behind here start to emerge. Painted in artificial light (Spencer refers to the painting in a manuscript list as Hilda by Electric Light TGA 733.3.88), there is no attempt made to disguise the age of the sitter, and her pose, apparently both tired and thoughtful, strikes a powerful contrast against the jaunty polka-dot pattern of her dress. Whilst this level of observation was nothing new for Spencer, it is almost impossible to escape the feeling that this portrait offers a level of intimacy and closeness between sitter and artist that is unusually tangible.