Stanley Spencer: a twentieth-century British Master First exhibition in Australia in fifty years
The centrepiece of Carrick Hill’s thirtieth anniversary of its opening to the public will be an exhibition of national significance entitled Stanley Spencer: a twentieth-century British Master running from 3 August to 4 December 2016.
It will be the first exhibition in Australia in fifty years devoted to Stanley Spencer (1891- 1959). The first Spencer exhibition in Australia was held in Adelaide as part of the 1966 Adelaide Festival of Arts for which the Haywards of Carrick Hill lent paintings.
The exhibition, which is only to be shown in Adelaide, will re-examine Stanley Spencer’s contribution to British Modernism through the Spencer works currently held in the Southern Hemisphere.
Spencer is heralded as one of Britain’s most significant twentieth-century artists. Although he never visited the antipodes his work is in every major institution throughout Australia and New Zealand with Adelaide at one time being home to as many as twenty works, the largest group collected outside of the United Kingdom during the artist’s lifetime.
Stuart Conlin Chair of Trustees at The Sir Stanley Spencer Memorial Trust, Cookham says ‘Some of Spencer’s most extravagant flower and garden paintings are held at Carrick Hill. Blue Iris, Sunflower, From the Artists Window, andFlowers and Rooftops are just four of these. 2016 is an impressively active year for Stanley Spencer, with three single artist exhibitions in England and one in Australia at Carrick Hill’.
The Haywards first saw Spencer’s work in Adelaide in 1935 in the landmark Loan Exhibition of Contemporary British Art and were inspired to buy their first work by the artist during their honeymoon in England the same year. They eventually amassed the largest private collection of Spencer’s work outside England. The Hayward’s home became a microcosm of British taste … Jeffrey Smart calling it an education in the modern styles emanating in Britain and ‘the best private collection in Australia.’
Stanley Spencer: a twentieth-century British master will feature a selection of thirty works. They include still-lives, landscapes, portraits and figurative compositions on loan from national and international sources.
The Spencer showing will be accompanied by a new book (the largest ever produced by Carrick Hill, published by Wakefield Press) and a new film to be produced by Catherine Hunter (who produced a recent documentary on artist Jeffrey Smart and The Black Rose featuring artist Trent Parke).The film will be shot in Spencer’s home town of Cookham in England (situated on the riverside of the Thames between Maidenhead and Marlow) and in Adelaide.
The exhibition will also be complemented by a public program of talks, music (Spencer was a talented pianist) and readings (he was a prolific letter writer as well as a prolific painter).
