Sir Stanley Spencer

Tree and Chicken Coops, Wangford

1925

© Estate of Stanley Spencer

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Not on display

Artist: Sir Stanley Spencer 1891–1959
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 457 × 762 mm
frame: 662 × 967 × 55 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Bequeathed by Sir Edward Marsh through the Contemporary Art Society 1953
Reference: N06150

Display caption

Spencer stayed in lodgings in the village of Wangford in Suffolk for parts of the years 1924, 1925 and 1926. He began to paint the surrounding Suffolk landscape in 1924 and commented in 1937 that he liked the area very much because it was 'full of character'. Spencer made nine paintings of Wangford and its environs between 1924 and 1926 and this is one of them. In the mid-1920s Spencer was living in London at the Vale Studios in Hampstead. He decided to marry a fellow painter, Hilda Carline, and their marriage took place in Wangford village in February 1925.

Gallery label, September 2004

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Catalogue entry

N06150 TREE AND CHICKEN COOPS, WANGFORD 1925

Not inscribed.
Canvas, 18×30 (46×76·5).
Bequeathed by Sir Edward Marsh through the Contemporary Art Society 1953.
Coll: Purchased by Sir Edward Marsh from the artist 1926.
Exh: Exhibitions of Paintings, ... by Artists Resident in Great Britain and the Dominions, Imperial Gallery of Art, Imperial Institute, April–June 1927 (116), as ‘Landscape’; Contemporary British Art, Whitechapel Art Gallery, October–December 1929 (265); Contemporary British Artists, Agnew's, November–December 1930 (30); Twenty-Five Years of British Paintings, 1910–1935, Mayor Gallery, April–May 1935 (46); British Council, Empire Exhibition, Johannesburg, 1936 (698); Venice Biennale, 1938 (British Pavilion, 66); Leger Gallery, March–April 1939 (19), as ‘The Lonely Tree’; Temple Newsam, Leeds, July–September 1947 (16), as ‘Tree and Chicken Coops’; C.A.S., The Private Collector, Tate Gallery, March–April 1950 (263); Tate Gallery, November–December 1955 (26).
Lit: E. Marsh, A Number of People, 1939, p.360; Spencer, 1961, p.174.
Repr: Rothenstein, 1945, pl.18 (in colour); Studio, CXXXIV, 1947, p.133 (in colour).

The artist said that he had in mind Scottish ballads such as ‘The Twa Corbies’. He lived at Wangford near Southwold for about a year after his marriage in 1925.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II