Heavenly bodies

Fifty years ago, the Stanley Spencer Gallery was founded in a converted Wesleyan Chapel by a group of local enthusiasts who wanted to celebrate the extraordinary achievement of Cookham’s most famous son. As Joan George recounts in her fascinating book, Stanley Spencer Remembered (Taderon Press, £6), at the gallery’s inauguration, Gilbert Spencer (Stan’s younger brother) quoted an inscription remembered from childhood on the chapel’s wall: ‘How amiable are thy tabernacles O Lord of Hosts.’ ‘Nowhere,’ declared Gilbert, ‘would its message be more appropriate than in this Gallery.’

Stanley Spencer (1891–1959) is famous for his love of his home town, for his unconventional approach to intimate relationships, for his partiality to bread and jam and what other people saw as rubbish, and for painting some of the most original and uplifting human documents of the 20th century. It’s appropriate that his life and work should be commemorated in a chapel because Spencer’s vision of the world was imbued with spiritual fervour.