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Introduction
Executed between 1927 and 1932, the wall paintings at Sandham Memorial Chapel comprise Stanley Spencer's most famous work and are arguably his finest achievement.
This extraordinary project illustrates the artist's experiences as a medical orderly in a war hospital in Bristol and the northern Greek region of Macedonia during the First World War and was strongly influenced by Giotto's Arena Chapel in Padua.
Painted in oil, Spencer intended the murals to celebrate the everyday routine of a soldier's life and to express an intensely personal religious faith. The scheme reaches its climax with the huge Resurrection of the Soldiers which completely fills the Altar wall and dominates the whole interior.
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Spencer's childhood
Stanley Spencer was born in Cookham, Berkshire on 30 June 1891. His upbringing as the eighth surviving child of William Spencer, a self-styled Professor of Music and Organist of St Nicholas, Hedsor, was cheerfully unconventional by late Victorian standards. He and his younger brother Gilbert were taught by their older sisters in the 'school' which their father set up in a potting shed at the bottom of the garden.
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Slade School of Fine Art
In 1908 Stanley Spencer began four years as a student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He joined a remarkable class, one which included Paul Nash, David Bomberg, Mark Gertler, C.R.W. Nevinson and Edward Wadsworth. Among them, he shone, capturing the coveted Melville Nettleship Prize in 1912 with his painting of The Nativity. 'He has shown signs', Professor Henry Tonks wrote, 'of having the most original mind of anyone we have had at the Slade and he combines it with great powers of draughtsmanship.'
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A war-time soldier
Spencer spent the entire war in the ranks, first as a medical orderly at the Beaufort War Hospital near Bristol. Then, in August 1916, he volunteered for service overseas and was assigned to the 68th Field Ambulances in Macedonia. A year later he transferred to the Seventh Battalion of the Royal Berkshires, to spend several months in the front lines before suffering from malaria, which resulted in being sent home.
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The idea is conceived and patrons found
In 1923 Spencer stayed in Dorset with the painter Henry Lamb. His host wrote: 'Stanley sits at a table all day evolving acres of Salonica and Bristol war compositions'. In his own words he had, by then, 'drawn' a whole architectural scheme of the pictures and with Lamb's encouragement he began to consider raising a subscription among his friends and patrons to enable him to realise the project. At that crucial moment, Mr and Mrs J.L. Behrend visited Lamb and Spencer. Mrs Behrend's brother, Lieutenant Henry Willoughby Sandham, had died in 1919 as a result of an illness he had contracted during the Macedonian campaign. Deeply impressed by Spencer's reminiscences of the same theatre of war, the Behrends decided, before the end of that summer, to commission Spencer's chapel as a private memorial. 'What ho, Giotto!' was his response.
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And a site chosen
In spite of Spencer's preference for a site in Cookham, the Behrends naturally chose to build their oratory near to their home in the Hampshire village of Burghclere. They appointed Lionel Pearson as their architect, with instructions to combine almshouses with Spencer's chapel, which was closely modelled by the painter upon Giotto's Arena Chapel in Padua. At first, Spencer thought of taking the analogy further, by painting in fresco, but after a series of experiments he wisely reverted to his familiar medium of oils on canvas.
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The painting begins
Spencer did not wait for the building to be finished to begin painting. In 1927 he completed the first two small canvases destined for the chapel, Scrubbing the Floor and Sorting and Moving Kit-Bags, in his studio in the Vale Hotel, Hampstead. In May, he and his wife moved with their baby daughter Shirin to Burghclere where the Behrends arranged temporary accommodation for them at Palmer's Hill Farm. Meanwhile, his patrons were constructing not only the chapel, but Chapel View, the house in which the Spencer's lived with their servant Elsie until 1932.
©NTPL / Roy Fox
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Painting in situ
For the better part of four years, Spencer worked in the chapel itself. He painted as easel pictures the eight arch-topped canvases and the eight smaller 'predellas' which were installed into the bay divisions on the north and south walls. The uppermost sections of those walls, together with the entire east wall, had to be painted in situ. To minimise the number of seams, especially wide bolts of canvas were ordered from a Belgian manufacturer. The walls were first lined with asbestos cloth to which the lengths of canvas were then glued. During the summer of 1928 Mr Head, the builder, erected scaffolding in the chapel from which Spencer could paint directly on to the canvas-covered walls.
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Watching the artist at work
Spencer was in no way troubled by the interruptions of visitors, one of whom was surprised to find the artist perched high on his scaffold reading Mark Twain. Indeed during this time there was a steady stream of visitors to Burghclere, including the poet Arthur Whaley and members of the Bloomsbury set, including Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, Leonard and Virginia Woolf and the Carringtons.
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The chapel is dedicated
On 25 March 1927 the Oratory of All Souls, Burghclere, was dedicated by the Bishop of Guildford. By coincidence, the date (the Feast of the Annunciation) was that on which Giotto's Arena Chapel had been consecrated some six centuries earlier.
Spencer and his family moved back to Cookham, where he painted the last of the canvases in his new studio. In 1932 the chapel was completed.
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