Gilbert Spencer RA RWS
1892 - 1978
Born at Cookham, Berkshire, Gilbert Spencer studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art (wood carving), from 1911–12, then followed his brother Stanley to the Slade School of Fine Art, remaining until 1915. At the Slade, Gilbert came under the powerful influence of Henry Tonks. He won the coveted life drawing prize in 1914 and was runner-up for the summer competition prize, with a large mural, "The Seven Ages of Man". During World War I, despite pacifist beliefs, both Stanley and Gilbert served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, initially at the Beaufort War Hospital in Bristol. Gilbert was then drafted to the Macedonian front, serving in Salonika and in the Eastern Mediterranean from 1915–19. He returned to his studies at the Slade after the war and came under the patronage of Lady Ottoline Morrell, living at her home at Garsington and being drawn into the Bloomsbury set. Spencer is probably best known for his portraits and murals, but was primarily a landscape painter, focusing his attention on rural life and scenes in the South of England. Perhaps his best-known painting is the large canvas, "A Cotswold Farm". From 1932-48, Gilbert Spencer was Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art (RCA). He was also Head of the Department of Painting at Glasgow School of Art from 1948–50 and Head of Painting at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts from 1950-57. When the RCA was evacuated to Ambleside in the Lake District in 1940, Spencer
Born at Cookham, Berkshire, Gilbert Spencer studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art (wood carving), from 1911–12, then followed his brother Stanley to the Slade School of Fine Art, remaining until 1915. At the Slade, Gilbert came under the powerful influence of Henry Tonks. He won the coveted life drawing prize in 1914 and was runner-up for the summer competition prize, with a large mural, "The Seven Ages of Man". During World War I, despite pacifist beliefs, both Stanley and Gilbert served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, initially at the Beaufort War Hospital in Bristol. Gilbert was then drafted to the Macedonian front, serving in Salonika and in the Eastern Mediterranean from 1915–19. He returned to his studies at the Slade after the war and came under the patronage of Lady Ottoline Morrell, living at her home at Garsington and being drawn into the Bloomsbury set. Spencer is probably best known for his portraits and murals, but was primarily a landscape painter, focusing his attention on rural life and scenes in the South of England. Perhaps his best-known painting is the large canvas, "A Cotswold Farm". From 1932-48, Gilbert Spencer was Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art (RCA). He was also Head of the Department of Painting at Glasgow School of Art from 1948–50 and Head of Painting at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts from 1950-57. When the RCA was evacuated to Ambleside in the Lake District in 1940, Spencer
and his family travelled there, eventually provided with accommodation at his substantial home between Grasmere and Rydal Water by Professor Ernest de Sélincourt (1870–1943), an English literary scholar and critic and specialist in Wordsworth studies. Gilbert served in the Home Guard while at Ambleside and was employed as an official war artist from 1940–43, commissioned to paint scenes of military training in England. After the War, he lived in Berkshire and later Suffolk, and was a prolific exhibitor at the Royal Academy. More than his brother, portraiture was at the heart of Gilbert's oeuvre, as was the making of finished portraits in graphite. The two drawings listed on this website, one made in his early thirties and the other in his late forties, illustrate the durability of this practice through his career.
2 ITEMS
