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The Enchantment of Stanley Spencer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Keith Tester
Keith Tester*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Sciences, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull, HU6 7RX
*
Email: k.tester@hull.ac.uk
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Abstract

In the early 1930s the artist Stanley Spencer committed himself to working on the never-achieved Church-House project. It was intended to reflect his understanding of God and religion as love, and, furthermore, of the sacred being fully integrated in secular times and places. The first painting he finished for the project was Villagers and Saints (1933), now in the collection of the University of Hull. This paper uses Villagers and Saints as a way into a reading of Spencer's work, drawing on insights from Charles Taylor's A Secular Age to explore how Spencer sacramentalises the material world. The first part of the paper contextualises Villagers and Saints, and the second part identifies its vision with what appears to have been a conversion experience, discussed by Spencer in his public writing.

Keywords

Stanley SpencerVillagers and Saintsconversionsacramentalisationlove
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 91 , Issue 1034 , July 2010 , pp. 370 - 385
Copyright
Copyright © The author 2009. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council

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