Cookham gallery lowers monumental Spencer canvas for first time in a decade

A winter exhibition on Stanley Spencer’s monumental unfinished painting has opened at his eponymous Cookham gallery.

Revealing Genius, Conserving Art: Stanley Spencer’s Final Masterpiece invites visitors to witness the scientific analysis of Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta (1952-9).

This work of art will be brought down from its elevated wall position in the Stanley Spencer Gallery and displayed at eye level for the first time since 2012.

Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta is one of Spencer’s largest and most ambitious works, measuring over 5 metres long, but was left incomplete at the time of his death in 1959.

As an unfinished work, it offers a rare glimpse into Spencer’s working methods.

Curator, Amanda Bradley Petitgas said: “At the end of Spencer’s life, in Christ Preaching, he returned to his youthful evocations of religious visions in Cookham, creating a work that is both triumphant and nostalgic.”

Visitors will be able to study this masterpiece up close and learn about how science helps to understand the making of a work of art and how Spencer himself worked.

On certain exhibition days, Olivia Leake, a conservator studying at the Courtauld Institute of Art, will carefully examine the canvas to reveal new insights into Spencer’s creative process.

From pigments and brushwork to the methods he used to transfer his detailed sketches, this close study will provide a deeper understanding of the artist and how to preserve the work.

Viewers can follow the section-by-section progression of his composition, and his disciplined approach, which was inspired by Renaissance fresco painting, developed during his time at the Slade School of Fine Art.

Spencer first began exploring ideas for this composition in the 1920s, but it wasn’t until Christmas 1951 that the vision crystallised.

He sketched late into the night, producing hundreds of preparatory drawings in pencil and coloured crayons, on any paper that came to hand, from fine art stock to butter paper.

The ambition of the work required him to paint in cramped conditions in his Cookham Rise home, working on small, unrolled sections of the canvas while sitting on a stool at a trestle table.

The new exhibition will build on the Gallery’s summer exhibition, That Marvellous Atmosphere: Stanley Spencer and Cookham Regatta, which explored the spiritual themes of Christ Preaching and the significance of the Cookham Regatta in Spencer’s life.

This next chapter will shift the focus to his studio practice, ranging from early student exercises to his late experiments, revealing the meticulous drawing habits and inventive working methods that shaped one of his greatest artistic undertakings.

The exhibition will include some of Spencer’s most iconic paintings, including The Last Supper (1920), St. Veronica (1920), Neighbours (1936), and Englefield House (1951).

These illustrate the stylistic transformation in Spencer’s work and the shift from the imaginative to the photographic.

The exhibition opened on November 6 and will run until March 29 2026.

Opening hours are from Thursday to Sunday, 11am to 4.30pm.

Visit stanleyspencer.org.uk for more information.