Gilbert Spencer

Gilbert Spencer
A 1926 photo of Gilbert Spencer by Lady Ottoline Morrell
Born	Gilbert Spencer (1892-08-04)4 August 1892 Cookham U.K.
Died	14 January 1979(1979-01-14) (aged 86) Cliveden, Buckinghamshire U.K.
Nationality	British
Education	Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, the Royal College of Art and The Slade
Known for	Painting
Notable work	Many Landscape Views
Awards	R.A.

Gilbert Spencer RA (4 August 1892 – 14 January 1979) was a British painter of landscapes, portraits, figure compositions and mural decorations. He worked in oils and watercolor. He was the younger brother of the painter Sir Stanley Spencer.

Born at Cookham, Berkshire, on 4 August 1892, thirteen months after his more famous brother Stanley Spencer, Gilbert Spencer was the eighth son and youngest of the eleven children of William Spencer, organist and music teacher, and his wife, Anna Caroline Slack. The family had little spare money and the formal education of their children was sketchy, but what they lacked in schooling was made up for by the talk they heard between their elders at meal times.

Gilbert studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art (wood carving) 1911–12. Subsequently, Gilbert followed Stanley to the Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 1913, remaining until 1915. At the Slade, Gilbert came under the powerful influence of Henry Tonks, which remained with him to the end of his life. He won the coveted life drawing prize in 1914 and was runner-up for the summer competition prize, with a huge mural, The Seven Ages of Man (Art Gallery of Hamilton, Canada).

During the First World War, after somewhat pacifist misgivings on the part of both themselves and their mother, both Stanley and Gilbert served in the R.A.M.C., initially at the Beaufort Military Hospital in Bristol. Gilbert was then drafted out to Macedonia, serving in Thessalonice and in the Eastern Mediterranean 1915–19. He returned to his studies at The Slade after the war (1919–20).

Whilst at the Slade in 1919, Gilbert Spencer met Hilda Carline, later to become the wife of Stanley, and her brother Sydney Carline, who was the Ruskin master of drawing at Oxford. During 1922, Sydney invited Gilbert to join his staff in Oxford. This provided him with a convenient way of life until he could put on his first one-man show at the Goupil Gallery, London, in 1923. He met Lady Ottoline Morrell who assisted him by arranging a room for him in the village of Garsington and allowing him easy access to Garsington Manor. Thus he came into contact with many notable artists and members of the Bloomsbury set. His paintings of this time, such as Trees at Garsington (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), Garsington Roofs, and The Sheep Fold at Upper Farm, have a characteristic directness of line and clarity of colour.