Stanley Spencer - ACE088.6

Photograph of Spencer. VO describes decision to leave Cookham because of being "criticised and misunderstood". Hampstead; Spencer’s room. Self Portrait (1936). VO describes working on ideas for the Christ in the Wilderness series. Sketches. The Foxes Have Holes (1939); Rising from Sleep in the Morning (1940); another painting; The Eagles (1939). The Foxes Have Holes over mantelpiece. VO describes the series of paintings and Spencer’s thoughts about the images. Spencer’s VO reading passages from the Bible accompanies appropriate paintings: Driven by the Spirit into the Wilderness (1939); He Departed unto a Mountain to Pray (1940); The Scorpion (1939); The Hen; unfinished panel. Self Portrait (1939). Interior Cookham Church; paintings arranged as panels for the chancel ceiling. Film of Spencer talking about art, himself, and sparrows in the Glasgow shipyards. Photographs of Spencer at the Lithgow shipyards; VO talks about the "epic in paint of all the different jobs" there: panning view of two of the panels – Bending the Keel Plate (1943) and Riveters (1941) – of Shipbuilding on the Clyde series (1939-1945); VO compares shipbuilding to a woman making a dress. Shipyard scenes (VO describes Spencer’s impressions) and paintings including Riggers; details from Welders (1941); Burners (1940); men leaving work.