We have just been informed that a major work by Gilbert Spencer has come up for sale through Patrick Bourne and is currently at the Fine Art Show at the Business Design Centre in London. "Hebridean Memory" is priced at £165,000;
A bit about the painting;
To celebrate the Festival of Britain in 1951 the Arts Council of Great Britain invited sixty artists to paint a large work, not less than 45 by 60 inches, on a subject of their choice. Francis Bacon, Edward Burra, Lucian Freud and Ben Nicholson were amongst those who contributed, and “Sixty Paintings for ‘51” opened at the RBA galleries, one of a series of major visual arts exhibitions for the Festival.
Gilbert Spencer (1892-1979) painted Hebridean Memory, a landscape set on the small Island of Canna in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. He had holidayed there in 1947, staying with John Campbell who had bought Canna outright in 1938, and was now living there as its Laird with his wife Margaret in the prominent harbour property Canna House. Spencer and Campbell had been friends since the 1930s when they met in Oxford, where Spencer had been painting a series of murals depicting the Foundation of Bailliol College and Campbell was doing post-graduate work.
In his autobiography, Spencer remembers toying with ‘an idea…in the shape of a mural painting which was to include all that I associated with the island’ during his long walks on Canna. However he confirms that the concept did not materialise in paint until the Festival of Britain invitation prompted him to ‘revive the idea’. He was at this stage Head of Painting at Glasgow School of Art, and living in ‘ugly’ lodgings on Kersland Street which were a ‘far cry from the romantic setting of that holiday.’
Hebridean Memory depicts several of Canna’s landmarks and the locals going about island activities – farming and lobster and mackerel fishing - whilst visitors sunbathe. Rum features in the distance with MacBrayne’s steamer on its way over. A vision of contentment and plenty, the only incongruity is the man with the gun: Campbell, who wanted the island to be a sanctuary for wildlife, did not allow shooting. The composition also includes a whimsical depiction in the right foreground of the artist and his older brother Stanley as their younger selves.
Spencer has written about the trials of working on such a large-scale canvas, and that Hebridean Memory took him three years (with several incarnations) to achieve. After ‘Sixty Paintings for ’51’ it was shown at the RA in 1955 but this is the first time it has been exhibited publicly since.
