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£2,500

Presentation: Framed
SN: 5240
Signed and dated 1919
Oil on panel,
10 x 12 in.

Provenance: a gift from the artist to Mrs Millar, daughter of the Hampstead landlord where Spencer was lodging, circa 1920; thence by descent.

In a dark oak shallow wedge section frame with gilded inner slip.

This panel was painted directly from nature, and is typical of the artist's finest work en plein air. A possible identification for this panel is Sashes Island in Cookham where Gilbert was born and grew up. A painting of Sashes Island, dated 1919, is in the collection of Tate Britain (N06021)

Thirteen months younger than his more famous brother Stanley , Gilbert Spencer studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, the Royal College of Art (wood carving) 1911–12 and the Slade School of Fine Art (1913–15).

During the First World War, Gilbert served with the R.A.M.C. initially at the Beaufort Military Hospital in Bristol (with his brother Stanley, for a short while) in Thessalonice and the Eastern Mediterranean 1915–19. He returned to his studies at The Slade after the war (1919–20).
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 149
Oil on canvas, 20 X 11 ins. (51 X 28 cms.) Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1970 (241)

Spencer is likely to have painted this picture whilst visiting his artist friend Douglas Percy Bliss in Derbyshire. Although undated, stylistically it is typical of Spencer's later work, in which the paint is applied more thinly and the compositions tend to be more linear.

We are grateful to Peyton Skipwith for his assistance.

Thumbnail panels:

Gilbert Spencer 1892-1979

Painter, especially of landscapes, draughtsman, teacher and writer, and brother of the painter Stanley Spencer. Born at Cookham, Berkshire. Spencer studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, woodcarving at the Royal College of Art, 1911-12, then with Fred Brown and Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Fine Art, 1913-20. Between 1915 and 1919 he served in the army. Spencer had his first one-man show at the Goupil Gallery in 1923; he also exhibited at the RA (he was elected RA in 1960), NEAC, (of which he was a member), Leicester Galleries, RSA, Redfern Gallery and many other venues. Although he produced notable wall paintings for Holywell Manor, Oxford, 1934-6, Spencer made his name as a landscape artist working mainly in the English southern counties. At various times he taught at the Royal College of Art, Glasgow School of Art and Camberwell, serving meanwhile as an Official War Artist, 1940-3. His book Stanley Spencer appeared in 1961 and his autobiography, Memoirs of a Painter, in 1974. A retrospective exhibition was held at Reading in 1964. The Tate and many other public collections hold his work. He sometimes just signed his work GS. He lived in Hampstead and towards the end of his life near Reading, Berkshire.