When Stanley Spencer (1891–1959) painted “Christ Carrying the Cross,” he set the scene on the streets of his quiet village of Cookham, on the Thames about 30 miles west of London. In his depiction of “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem,” Cookham folk run down their garden paths, trampling their cabbage plants, to join the procession. And when he painted Jesus’ last meal (above) in 1920, Spencer set the table in the cramped back room of a local malthouse.
Critics of Spencer’s religious paintings claim that the artist demeaned religious events by turning them into unattractive, everyday events. Enthusiasts have suggested just the opposite: Spencer recognized the divine in the mundane. Spencer would seem to agree: “I want to show the relations of religious life in the secular, how that all is one religious life,” Spencer wrote in 1947.
The artist’s comments about this particular painting are a little more difficult to interpret. Spencer was “pleased” with the apostles’ legs under the table—a reference to the foot-washing that took place after the meal (John 12) or simply a depiction of tired apostles stretching out their legs?—and he “liked the red wall among the sandy coloured walls.” But in the end, Spencer felt the painting failed to convey the divinity of the malthouse. “Could not get the feeling of the place which at the beginning was indivisible from a concept I had of Christ,” Spencer noted. “It is still there in my mind. But it never came into the picture.”
When Stanley Spencer (1891–1959) painted “Christ Carrying the Cross,” he set the scene on the streets of his quiet village of Cookham, on the Thames about 30 miles west of London. In his depiction of “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem,” Cookham folk run down their garden paths, trampling their cabbage plants, to join the procession. And when he painted Jesus’ last meal (above) in 1920, Spencer set the table in the cramped back room of a local malthouse. Critics of Spencer’s religious paintings claim that the artist demeaned religious events by turning them into unattractive, everyday events. Enthusiasts have suggested […]
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