Product Description

Stanley Spencer was the most intensely local of all great artists, and his native village of Cookham was a central source of inspiration. Yet he was far from parochial, and woven into Duncan Robinson's account of the artist's career is a just appreciation of his greatness and of his place in the wider context of European art. This book celebrates both the range and the powerful individual quality of Spencer's achievements as a religious visionary, war artist, portrait painter and landscapist.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1953250 in Books
• Published on: 1994-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Customer Reviews

An Introduction, by fermed
Duncan Robinson is a professor at Yale, and his book on Stanley Spencer is a fine introduction to this mad eccentric from Cookham-on-Thames. Not long ago (1998) there was an exhibit of Spencer's work that traveled the United States, and so his name in this country is not as unknown as it used to be. Whether one is familiar with his work or not, this is a well balanced and nicely printed book, with over 100 reproductions, of which at least half are in color. I keep the book handy and have given copies of it to unsuspecting friends and relatives, who then (usually) become addicts of Mr. Spencer.

For those who have never seen Spencer's work, I certainly recommend using the internet as a first step in getting a feel for what he biographical and bibliographical information (although Robinson's book is not mentioned). The main drawback about looking at pictures on the internet is that many are so small and distorted that they dishonor the works they are trying to show; still, a visual approach is more effective than trying to describe the work of this extraordinary painter verbally. The pictures in Robinson's book, in contrast, are excellent reproductions and quite adequate as a means of presenting Spencer's work. I took a copy of this book to his exhibit and was satisfied with the quality of the reproductions one of England's most important painters of the 20th century.

Excellent Introduction
I really enjoyed this book. This is a concise (about 120 pages of text) and well illustrated (about 100 images) introduction to the remarkable English painter Stanley Spencer. Robinson's text provides a useful biography of Spencer's career, a good idea of his rather unconventional ideas, and short accounts of how he fit into the artistic currents of his times. The selection of images is very good and illustrates well the range of Spencer's work and its evolution over his long and productive career.
Spencer is known best for his religious paintings, notably the powerful mural The Resurrection of the Soldiers in the Sandham Memorial Chapel. A man of deep and unconventional faith, Spencer produced a large number of canvases with religious themes, usually fusing the sacred and the quotidian. A native of the village of Cookham, where he spent much of his working life, the environs of his town were literally sacred ground to Spencer. This resulted in a very personal but surprisingly effective icongraphy.
What makes this book particularly enjoyable is the revelation of the range of Spencer's art. Spencer was also an outstanding landscape painter and a superb portraitist. This book reproduces a number of lovely landscape paintings. Some of the portraits reproduced, both drawings and paintings, are stunning.