Stanley Spencer Gallery welcome Most Loved Works, an exhibition that will reveal the Gallery volunteers’ most loved works

Exhibition Dates: 10 November 2022 – 26 March 2023

Stanley Spencer Gallery is delighted to present Most Loved Works, an exhibition that will reveal the Gallery volunteers’ most loved works and why they mean so much to the community. Highlights include The Last Supper, set in the Cookham malthouses and painted just across the river at Bourne End; visitor-favourite Neighbours; and paintings from Spencer’s ‘Wedding at Cana’ series, which weave Biblical stories into scenes from village life. The exhibition will be a rare opportunity to see all the Gallery’s best-loved works on display at once.

The gallery is closely connected with Spencer’s beloved home village of Cookham. Situated in a former Wesleyan chapel in which Spencer worshipped as a child, the collection contains many drawings and paintings set in the village, as well as those reflecting his engagement with the wider twentieth-century world. The Gallery is also unusual in being staffed entirely by volunteers, many of whom, like Spencer, are Cookham residents. For this exhibition, ur volunteers have chosen their favourite works and shared their personal responses to them.

Comprised of 30 works, the exhibition includes oil paintings, drawings and sketches. It is divided into five thematic sections: Cookham — my Paradise; Religious Visionary; Women and Love; Portraits; and Drawing and Sketching. The exhibition will make the most of its unique location in the heart of Spencer’s ‘village in Heaven’. Cookham was the subject of and inspiration for many of Spencer’s paintings. Some of these were landscape paintings taken directly from nature, while others situated familiar Bible stories in recognisable Cookham locations. Spencer is also well known for his imaginative figure compositions, based on memories from his youth, which are often overlaid with a spiritual meaning.

On display for the first time in four years will be Spencer’s great religious painting, The Last Supper, in which Christ shares his final meal with his disciples in the loft of the Cookham malthouses. Spencer painted it while staying at Cornerways, the home of Sir Henry and Margaret Slesser in Bourne End, just across the river from Cookham. Also in the exhibition will be Sunbathers at Odney and Girls Returning from a Bathe, two paintings from Spencer’s ‘Wedding at Cana’ series, in which he reimagined the Biblical events taking place in and around Cookham.

Also included will be Spencer’s charming pen and ink drawing of young Roy Lacey leaning on a pew in Holy Trinity church. Spencer was around sixteen himself when he made the drawing and already showing great promise Many of the paintings and drawings in the exhibition are set are just a stone’s throw from the Gallery. Visitors will be able to enjoy Spencer’s paintings of The View from Cookham Bridge and The Angel, Cookham Churchyard, then take a short stroll to compare them with the real locations.

Curator Amy Lim says, ‘Stanley Spencer loved Cookham so much that he called it ‘a village in Heaven’. Perhaps that love is why so many of his works continue to elicit a strong personal response today, and I am delighted that our volunteers are able to share their enthusiasm for his works in this exhibition. Most Loved Works in the Stanley Spencer Gallery is a rare opportunity to see all the Gallery’s best-loved works on display at once, in the village that inspired them.’