Spencer Stanley and His Women

Sir Stanley Spencer RA (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959) was an English painter.

Stanley Spencer, 1959

In 1925, Spencer married Hilda Carline, then a student at the Slade and sister of the artist Richard Carline. A daughter, Shirin, was born in November of that year and a second daughter, Unity, in 1930. Spencer met the artist Patricia Preece in 1929 in Cookham. He became infatuated with her. Carline divorced Spencer in 1937. A week later he married Preece, who persuaded him to sign over his house to her; she, however, was a lesbian. She continued to live with her partner, Dorothy Hepworth, and though she frequently posed nude for her husband, she refused to consummate the marriage. When Spencer’s bizarre relationship with Preece finally fell apart (though she would never grant a divorce), he would visit Hilda, an arrangement that continued throughout the latter's subsequent mental breakdown. Hilda died from cancer in November 1950. The painful intricacies of this three-way relationship became the subject in 1996 of a play by the feminist playwright Pam Gems. (Wikipedia)

Nude Patricia Preece - second wife, 1935

Self-portrait with Patricia, 1936

Double Nude Portrait- The Artist with His Second Wife, 1937

Nude (Patricia Preece), 1935
Oil on canvas
50,8 x 76,2 cm

Seated Nude (Hilda Carline, first wife), 1942

The Beatitudes of Love: Toasting (or Sociableness), 1937, with Hilda

Sunbathers at Odney, 1935

Oil on canvas | 762 x 508 mm

Stanley Spencer Gallery , Cookham

 Other works example.