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Sir Stanley Spencer

Born 1891, Cookham, Berkshire.  Died 1959, Taplow, Buckinghamshire.

Stanley Spencer won a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art from 1908-12. He won a scholarship in 1910 and won the Summer Composition Prize in 1912.  He exhibited in Roger Fry's Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912.  He served in Macedonia in the First World War and received a War Artist's commission. He worked on the Burghclere Memorial Chapel from 1926-32, which drew on his experiences at the Front. In the Second World War he was commissioned to record ship building in Glasgow. After the War he returned to teach in Glasgow.

He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1950 and knighted in 1959.

His work is held in many international collections including the Tate Gallery and the Imperial War Museum in London.  In 1980 the Royal Academy in London organised a major retrospective exhibition of his work.  The Stanley Spencer Gallery opened in Cookham, Berkshire in 1962.

Miss J D Browne CBE MA, Principal, Coventry College of Education
Preliminary Sketch for Portrait of Miss J D Browne CBE MA