Stanley Spencer and the English Garden

About the
exhibition

Compton Verney’s unique blend of art expertise, Georgian architecture and breathtaking historic landscape made it the ideal setting for an important new exhibition on one of Britain’s best-loved artists: the eccentric, quintessentially English genius Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959). Stanley Spencer and the English Garden, will focus on Spencer’s gorgeous garden views and landscapes of the 1920s, 30s and 40s.

Spencer’s virtuoso treatment of this highly accessible and enormously attractive subject demonstrates the artist’s immense feeling for, and understanding of, the way the English landscape and the traditional English garden were changing during the twentieth century, and how contemporary building development was redefining or even eradicating familiar environments. They also chart his personal vision of the garden as a ‘private heaven’.

The exhibition was curated by Compton Verney’s Director, Dr Steven Parissien, and Dr Martin Postle, Academic Director of Yale University’s Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.