The New English Art Club
There are two large pictures by Stanley Spencer at the New English Art Club Exhibition which confirm the impression that there is an immense promise in his art and already considerable attainment. It has such depth and breadth, such spontaneity and comprehensiveness. Boggle as we may at certain neo-primitive tendencies in his figures, at certain humorous irrelevancies in their occupations, overriding and almost justifying these eccentricities there is the fact that these two pictures do immediately and irresistibly heighten and intensify our consciousness: they give us a "silent and instantaneous flash of collusion with beauty." The picture Swan Upping at Cookham is freer from the static archaistic convention than the pseudo-Biblical composition, The Sacrifice of Zacharias, which is, nevertheless, because of the landscape background, equally fascinating. In the former it is the rigid mask of the woman lifting the cushion out of the punt and the distortion of the shoulders of the dark-faced gentleman that provoke criticism: in the latter nearly all the figures are a little inexplicable, except (and here the realist will demur strongly) the gentleman who is footing it gently towards Zacharias and the Florentine gentleman who is indulging in a graceful and somewhat reminiscent dancing gesture. These two are an inevitable part of that luxuriant and yet refreshing scenery. Pre-Raphaelite will doubtless be the derogatory term applied to Mr. Stanley Spencer, and it is true that he has affinities with that group which started with such promise and then proceeded to develop its vices more fully than its virtues. But Spencer has not got these particular vices, an inordinate love of photographic detail and a languishing sentimentality. His work suggests, rather than actually contains, an infinite wealth of detail, and it is swept with fresh country air precluding any Pre-Raphaelite hothouse languor.
Nor must we fall into the error of demanding realistic character studies from an artist who does not see people from that point of view at all. His outlook is nearer to that of Blake: his people are embodiments of universal emotions, they are penetrated with a sense of religious awe and beauty. Or, rather, this is what they would be if his expression were to reach its full maturity and get rid of its present archaistic obsession. His figures might still be stiff and intense, but we would not notice this because of their profound significance.
HOWARD HANNAY