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Lot Essay
The present composition shows much of Spencer's Cookham visual vocabulary. The River Thames and the bridge at Cookham had appeared in a number of important earlier compositions including Swan Upping, 1915-1919 (Tate Britain, London) and his vast painting of The Resurrection, Cookham,1924-27 (Tate Britain, London).
In the 1930s Spencer devoted more energy than ever before to painting directly from life. From 1932 onwards, weather permitting, Spencer could usually be found with his easel set up in the open air somewhere around Cookham. Also, from 1935, Spencer began to paint his series of 'naked portraits' of Patricia Preece, working always at night. Seeing them together with the landscapes they can be seen as products of the same tight procedures - the same kind of attentiveness to the detail of untransfigured, factual appearance (see T. Hyman, Stanley Spencer, Tate Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2001, p. 132).
Sir John Rothenstein, one-time Director of the Tate Gallery, London, was a close personal friend of Spencer's and he wrote about the landscapes of the 1930s, 'Stanley Spencer has no source of income except painting and he could not survive, let alone paint huge Resurrections, unless he painted saleable landscapes. [...] It is a mistake, however, to dismiss the landscapes, even more the pedestrian, as a manual equivalent of colour photography undertaken with an eye to immediate sale, for they serve at least three other purposes. They give him hours of respite from the fearful effort involved in the production of large pictures, packed with incident and deeply felt; they refresh his vision by constantly renewing his intimate contacts with nature; and they charge his fabulous memory.
Although many of them appear to be the products of a hand of extraordinary skill guided by an intensely keen but wholly unreflective eye, commonplace images mechanically transferred to canvas, the landscapes rarely fail to reveal under scrutiny a quality that makes them less unremarkable. This is his comprehending love of his native place, and by a process of extension of all places. There is a compulsive force about this love: those who look at his paintings of Cookham and who might have been disposed to regard the place as a slightly vulgarized 'up-river' resort, whose pleasant but urbane traditional architecture is being steadily displaced by a species of poor man's 'stockbroker's Tudor', are forced - however reluctantly - to see it as a place very much on its own, the product of special social and historical impulses, and, taken all in all, a very likeable place. We are compelled by Stanley Spencer to look closely at Cookham, just as we are compelled by Mr John Betjeman to be aware of Victorian churches and villas' (see J. Rothenstein, Modern English Painters, London, 1957, pp. 422, 429).
The present composition was purchased from Arthur Tooth & Sons, Spencer's dealer at the time, by Sir James McGregor who owned other oils by Spencer including Cockmarsh Hill, Cookham, 1935 (private collection), Cookham Lock, 1935 (purchased by McGregor for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney) and Cookham on Thames, 1937 (private collection). McGregor was a trustee of the National Gallery of New South Wales from 1928 to 1958. Since its acquisition in 1936, The Wharf, Cookham has not been seen publicly until now.
In the 1930s Spencer devoted more energy than ever before to painting directly from life. From 1932 onwards, weather permitting, Spencer could usually be found with his easel set up in the open air somewhere around Cookham. Also, from 1935, Spencer began to paint his series of 'naked portraits' of Patricia Preece, working always at night. Seeing them together with the landscapes they can be seen as products of the same tight procedures - the same kind of attentiveness to the detail of untransfigured, factual appearance (see T. Hyman, Stanley Spencer, Tate Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2001, p. 132).
Sir John Rothenstein, one-time Director of the Tate Gallery, London, was a close personal friend of Spencer's and he wrote about the landscapes of the 1930s, 'Stanley Spencer has no source of income except painting and he could not survive, let alone paint huge Resurrections, unless he painted saleable landscapes. [...] It is a mistake, however, to dismiss the landscapes, even more the pedestrian, as a manual equivalent of colour photography undertaken with an eye to immediate sale, for they serve at least three other purposes. They give him hours of respite from the fearful effort involved in the production of large pictures, packed with incident and deeply felt; they refresh his vision by constantly renewing his intimate contacts with nature; and they charge his fabulous memory.
Although many of them appear to be the products of a hand of extraordinary skill guided by an intensely keen but wholly unreflective eye, commonplace images mechanically transferred to canvas, the landscapes rarely fail to reveal under scrutiny a quality that makes them less unremarkable. This is his comprehending love of his native place, and by a process of extension of all places. There is a compulsive force about this love: those who look at his paintings of Cookham and who might have been disposed to regard the place as a slightly vulgarized 'up-river' resort, whose pleasant but urbane traditional architecture is being steadily displaced by a species of poor man's 'stockbroker's Tudor', are forced - however reluctantly - to see it as a place very much on its own, the product of special social and historical impulses, and, taken all in all, a very likeable place. We are compelled by Stanley Spencer to look closely at Cookham, just as we are compelled by Mr John Betjeman to be aware of Victorian churches and villas' (see J. Rothenstein, Modern English Painters, London, 1957, pp. 422, 429).
The present composition was purchased from Arthur Tooth & Sons, Spencer's dealer at the time, by Sir James McGregor who owned other oils by Spencer including Cockmarsh Hill, Cookham, 1935 (private collection), Cookham Lock, 1935 (purchased by McGregor for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney) and Cookham on Thames, 1937 (private collection). McGregor was a trustee of the National Gallery of New South Wales from 1928 to 1958. Since its acquisition in 1936, The Wharf, Cookham has not been seen publicly until now.