Signed l.r.: Gilbert Spencer

Watercolour over pencil

The present watercolour was painted in the middle of the Second World War when the Royal College of Art was evacuated to the Lake District. Gilbert Spencer was a teacher at the college at the time.

Oil on canvas, 18 by 24ins (46 by 61 cm) 

In his obituary in The Guardian in 1979, Sidney Hutchison referred to Gilbert Spencer as the “John Constable of the twentieth century”. This bold claim bears witness to the essential Englishness of Spencer’s art which at its best is equal to any painting of its age in recording England’s domestic landscape, the working spirit of the farm and the everyday life of rural Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Dorset and the Lake District. Like John Nash, Spencer has often been unfavourably compared to his more famous brother (in his case Stanley Spencer). Like Nash, though, this comparison does not hold up following a closer look at his output. For whilst Gilbert Spencer began his working life as a muralist, working alongside and in a close style to his brother, his work quickly evolved into a distinctive style (particularly in its approach to the English landscape) that was very much his own.