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Lot Essay
Stanley Spencer first met Hilda Carline (1889-1950) over dinner at the Carline family home at 47 Downshire Hill in Hampstead, London, in 1919. Hilda was born into an artistic family: her parents, George and Annie Carline, were both artists and two of her four brothers, Sydney and Richard, studied painting in Paris and London under Percyval Tudor-Hart as well as spending time at the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1913, Hilda, who had artistic ambitions of her own, joined her brothers at Tudor-Hart's London establishment, where she became a skilled draftswoman and watercolourist. Her artistic activities were interrupted by the war during which she served as a Land Girl in the Land Army, working on a farm near Wangford, Suffolk. After the war she enrolled as a part-time student at the Slade School, where she won several prizes for painting and drawing, in the process becoming a highly accomplished artist. In 1921, she exhibited her work for the first time with the London Group.
By late 1919, when Sydney and Richard Carline returned from war work in the Middle East, the Carline's house at Downshire Hill, together with their studios down the road at 14a, became an important meeting place for a number of artists, including Henry Lamb, Mark Gertler, John and Paul Nash, Christopher Nevinson, Charles Ginner, and Stanley and Gilbert Spencer. Stanley Spencer now became attached to the Carlines, joining them on family painting expeditions to Seaford, Sussex, in 1920, as well as to Essex and Suffolk (1924) and a longer trip to Yugoslavia in 1922. On each of there occasions, Stanley Spencer and Hilda Carline painted landscapes side by side and their works are sometimes hard to distinguish from one another. The two were married in 1927, living at first in the Vale of Health Hotel, Hampstead before moving to Hampshire in 1927.
Stanley Spencer made this fine drawing of his wife in 1931 while they were living in the village of Burghclere, Hampshire, where the artist was working on the paintings for the Sandham Memorial Chapel. Although preoccupied with the tremendous task of completing the Chapel, he also found time to paint a number of landscapes, including Cottages at Burghclere (1930-31, Fitzwilliam Museum). He also made at least two drawings of Hilda, one of which was the present study. The other, Hilda Nude (1931, National Galleries of Scotland) exhibits a similar atmosphere of pensive intimacy. Both drawings are closely related to a pencil study of Stanley Spencer made by Hilda - Stanley Nude (1931, National Galleries of Scotland) - which shows him in a similar pose to Hilda Nude, with one arm and the top of the head cut off by the edge of the paper. Seen together, the three drawings represent a particular moment in Stanley and Hilda Spencer's relationship, in which the two artists seem to be appraising one another through the medium of their art.
Shortly after this moment of reciprocal contemplation, their relationship was to founder as Stanley Spencer became increasingly preoccupied with Patricia Preece, the woman who was to become his second wife. He now turned his attention to making pencil and oil portraits of Patricia, including for example, the 1933 Portrait of Patricia Preece (Southampton Art Gallery). However, he did paint three other portraits of Hilda, Hilda, Unity and Dolls (1937, Leeds City Art Galleries); Seated Nude (private collection), painted in 1942 from a drawing made circa 1929-30; and Portrait of Hilda Carline (1949, private collection). In addition, three full-length pencil studies of Hilda reclining comfortably in an armchair (undated but 1920s or early 1930s, Christie's, Stanley Spencer Studio Sale, 5 November 1998, lot 38, illustrated) suggest an unrealized idea for a painting.
From the 1930s onward, Hilda also appears in numerous imaginative paintings, culminating in such works as Love Letters (1950, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection), Hilda Welcomed (1953, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide) and Hilda with Bluebells (private collection) of 1955.
In both Hilda with Hair Down and Hilda Nude, Stanley Spencer employed the fine lines, delicate shading and academic attention to detail that he learned at the Slade School (1908-1912), where he had studied drawing in the life classes under the rigorous instruction of Henry Tonks. In the present drawing, Spencer began with a small sheet of paper, roughly square, on which he depicted Hilda's head and shoulders. He then added three additional sections, transforming the study into a vertical rectangle and extending the figure to half length. The artist also used this method of expanding a composition in another portrait drawing, this time of Hilda's mother, Anne Carline, who visited the Spencer household at Burghclere in the summer of 1931 (see K. Bell, Stanley Spencer RA, London, Royal Academy, 1980, no. 134, illustrated).
Stanley Spencer's habit of starting his portraits with the eyes and working outwards probably meant that he sometimes simply ran out of space. In the Anne Carline portrait, for example, he added a section in order to complete the head and shoulders design. In Hilda with Hair Down, however, the expanded composition may have been intended as a preliminary study for a half-length painting of the kind found in his 1929 portrait of the Spencer's maid, Country Girl: Elsie (K. Bell, Stanley Spencer: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, London, 1992, no. 129, illustrated).
Stanley Spencer's preference for squeezing his subjects tightly into the frame of the composition, often slicing off parts of the figures and placing the subjects close to the picture-plane, can first be found in several early self-portraits, notably the 1913 pen-and-ink Portrait of the Artist (Bell, Royal Academy, 18, illustrated) and the Self Portrait (Tate, London) painted the following year. In the 1931 Hilda With Hair Down, Spencer translated the self-portrait method into his study of Hilda, so that the earlier, intensely focused examination of the self is now redirected to another person. Writing in 1937 about another painting, Self Portrait with Patricia Preece (1936, Fitzwilliam Museum), in which the artist showed himself, viewed from behind, pressed up close to the figure of Patricia and regarding her with extreme immediacy, Spencer wrote: 'There was no need to design or pose, all one had to do was put down what one saw.' He compared himself to an ant crawling over every detail of the body. That same searching scrutiny is at work in his Hilda with Hair Down.
Note: Hilda Spencer's life's work was finally exhibited, posthumously, in The Art of Hilda Spencer: Mrs Stanley Spencer, Usher Gallery, Lincoln, 1999, curated by Alison Thomas and Timothy Wilcox. The exhibition was accompanied by an extensive catalogue.
We are very grateful to Professor Keith Bell for preparing this catalogue entry.
By late 1919, when Sydney and Richard Carline returned from war work in the Middle East, the Carline's house at Downshire Hill, together with their studios down the road at 14a, became an important meeting place for a number of artists, including Henry Lamb, Mark Gertler, John and Paul Nash, Christopher Nevinson, Charles Ginner, and Stanley and Gilbert Spencer. Stanley Spencer now became attached to the Carlines, joining them on family painting expeditions to Seaford, Sussex, in 1920, as well as to Essex and Suffolk (1924) and a longer trip to Yugoslavia in 1922. On each of there occasions, Stanley Spencer and Hilda Carline painted landscapes side by side and their works are sometimes hard to distinguish from one another. The two were married in 1927, living at first in the Vale of Health Hotel, Hampstead before moving to Hampshire in 1927.
Stanley Spencer made this fine drawing of his wife in 1931 while they were living in the village of Burghclere, Hampshire, where the artist was working on the paintings for the Sandham Memorial Chapel. Although preoccupied with the tremendous task of completing the Chapel, he also found time to paint a number of landscapes, including Cottages at Burghclere (1930-31, Fitzwilliam Museum). He also made at least two drawings of Hilda, one of which was the present study. The other, Hilda Nude (1931, National Galleries of Scotland) exhibits a similar atmosphere of pensive intimacy. Both drawings are closely related to a pencil study of Stanley Spencer made by Hilda - Stanley Nude (1931, National Galleries of Scotland) - which shows him in a similar pose to Hilda Nude, with one arm and the top of the head cut off by the edge of the paper. Seen together, the three drawings represent a particular moment in Stanley and Hilda Spencer's relationship, in which the two artists seem to be appraising one another through the medium of their art.
Shortly after this moment of reciprocal contemplation, their relationship was to founder as Stanley Spencer became increasingly preoccupied with Patricia Preece, the woman who was to become his second wife. He now turned his attention to making pencil and oil portraits of Patricia, including for example, the 1933 Portrait of Patricia Preece (Southampton Art Gallery). However, he did paint three other portraits of Hilda, Hilda, Unity and Dolls (1937, Leeds City Art Galleries); Seated Nude (private collection), painted in 1942 from a drawing made circa 1929-30; and Portrait of Hilda Carline (1949, private collection). In addition, three full-length pencil studies of Hilda reclining comfortably in an armchair (undated but 1920s or early 1930s, Christie's, Stanley Spencer Studio Sale, 5 November 1998, lot 38, illustrated) suggest an unrealized idea for a painting.
From the 1930s onward, Hilda also appears in numerous imaginative paintings, culminating in such works as Love Letters (1950, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection), Hilda Welcomed (1953, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide) and Hilda with Bluebells (private collection) of 1955.
In both Hilda with Hair Down and Hilda Nude, Stanley Spencer employed the fine lines, delicate shading and academic attention to detail that he learned at the Slade School (1908-1912), where he had studied drawing in the life classes under the rigorous instruction of Henry Tonks. In the present drawing, Spencer began with a small sheet of paper, roughly square, on which he depicted Hilda's head and shoulders. He then added three additional sections, transforming the study into a vertical rectangle and extending the figure to half length. The artist also used this method of expanding a composition in another portrait drawing, this time of Hilda's mother, Anne Carline, who visited the Spencer household at Burghclere in the summer of 1931 (see K. Bell, Stanley Spencer RA, London, Royal Academy, 1980, no. 134, illustrated).
Stanley Spencer's habit of starting his portraits with the eyes and working outwards probably meant that he sometimes simply ran out of space. In the Anne Carline portrait, for example, he added a section in order to complete the head and shoulders design. In Hilda with Hair Down, however, the expanded composition may have been intended as a preliminary study for a half-length painting of the kind found in his 1929 portrait of the Spencer's maid, Country Girl: Elsie (K. Bell, Stanley Spencer: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, London, 1992, no. 129, illustrated).
Stanley Spencer's preference for squeezing his subjects tightly into the frame of the composition, often slicing off parts of the figures and placing the subjects close to the picture-plane, can first be found in several early self-portraits, notably the 1913 pen-and-ink Portrait of the Artist (Bell, Royal Academy, 18, illustrated) and the Self Portrait (Tate, London) painted the following year. In the 1931 Hilda With Hair Down, Spencer translated the self-portrait method into his study of Hilda, so that the earlier, intensely focused examination of the self is now redirected to another person. Writing in 1937 about another painting, Self Portrait with Patricia Preece (1936, Fitzwilliam Museum), in which the artist showed himself, viewed from behind, pressed up close to the figure of Patricia and regarding her with extreme immediacy, Spencer wrote: 'There was no need to design or pose, all one had to do was put down what one saw.' He compared himself to an ant crawling over every detail of the body. That same searching scrutiny is at work in his Hilda with Hair Down.
Note: Hilda Spencer's life's work was finally exhibited, posthumously, in The Art of Hilda Spencer: Mrs Stanley Spencer, Usher Gallery, Lincoln, 1999, curated by Alison Thomas and Timothy Wilcox. The exhibition was accompanied by an extensive catalogue.
We are very grateful to Professor Keith Bell for preparing this catalogue entry.