An important painting by Sir Stanley Spencer “Crossing the Road” will go under the hammer at Bonhams’ 20th Century British Art Sale on the 2 July. The piece is estimated to sell for £100,000 – 150,000. Spencer’s love of his home village, Cookham, was immortalised in his series of paintings for the “Church-House” scheme that he began in 1932. “Crossing the Road” belongs to this extremely ambitious and important project. The 1930’s are considered by many to be Spencer’s master years, during which his imaginative and painterly images earned him a place in history as one Britain’s most talented and inventive artist of the 20th century.
An early 20th Century French beechwood artist’s travelling easel, previously owned by Sir Stanley Spencer, is to be sold at Bonhams’ Frame Sale on 9 July.
The easel, which is estimated to sell for £400 – 600, comes with a letter from the present owner detailing its provenance as a gift from Sir Stanley Spencer in 1950, together with four drawings by her of Spencer. She explains “Stanley Spencer gave me this easel in Cookham in 1950 when I told him I was studying art at the Moor Hall. The job was to allow me to earn some money to buy an easel and art materials in my vacation. He said he had an easel he could spare if I would like it, and, as good as his word, he brought it a few days later.” The owner also adds “My colleagues at Moor Hall avoided Stanley Spencer – telling me that he was a “scruffy man, always buttonholing anyone who would listen to him talking about his paintings.” Sir Stanley Spencer was one of the great British artists of the 20th century. He was born in the Thames-side village of Cookham in Berkshire and became closely identified with it through his lifelong sequences of visionary paintings transforming the local into the epic with an oddness and intensity unparalleled in 20th century British art.
