Landscape artwork of an eccentric genius on display in Warwickshire

IT’s always worth a journey to see the work of Stanley Spencer, the endearingly eccentric genius of British 20th century art.

In his own journeyings around his native village of Cookham, he could often be seen and was often photographed, pushing his painting gear in a battered old pram that makes a striking ‘guest’ appearance at the start of the exhibition.

He wasn’t entirely convinced of the value of the numerous studies of his neighbours’ gardens that he made during these outings, but he clearly enjoyed doing them because every leaf is lovingly delineated and every brick neatly set in place with Pre-Raphaelite precision.

Many of the studies are united here for the first time as a coherent body of work in what is for Compton Verney something of a curatorial coup. There’s even information on the trees and flowers. The works benefit enormously from being seen as a cohesive group rather than as mere limbering-up exercises for the better known monumental works of Christ preaching at Cookham regatta or Cookham mums and dads being raised from the dead.

There are though, unconscious echoes of his harrowing wartime experiences in for instance, Leamington Art Gallery’s Cookham Rise, where ranks of garden stakes could just as easily be marking graves in any of his war paintings.

There’s also ambiguity in Cookham Rise Cottages, where uniform ranks of garden fences suggest something similar. And in many of the other works barbed wire and thick hedges seem to deny progress to the fields beyond.

Keen gardeners will love this exhibition, but for anyone interested in Spencer’s artistic development or engaged themselves in the pursuit of landscape painting, this show is a must.

Peter McCarthy