Conversation Piece

This painting depicts the Norman-Butler family, including Christopher, Belinda, Edward and Catherine, at Apple Pie Cottage in Compton. In a letter to Belinda Norman-Butler, dated 12 November 1963, Spencer described how the painting 'is not a portrait but a feeling of you both together at Compton'. The title refers to the eighteenth-century 'conversation piece', a genre that showed family groups gathered in domestic landscapes or interiors. It should not be confused with the 'Conversation Piece' also exhibited at Reading 1964 (37), which was probably originally titled 'Conversation'.

Date: 1963
Inscriptions: lr: GS 1963
Tags: Landscape, Figures, Oil Paintings
Medium: Oil on canvas
Height (mm): 455
Width (mm): 610
Location: Private collection
Exhibition History: Reading 1964 (93); RA 1969 (394)
Provenance: Commissioned by Mrs Belinda Norman-Butler 1963; private collection, Spain; Parker Fine Art Auctions, 4 November 2021 lot 290; Bonhams, London 12 July 2023 lot 54; Jenna Burlingham Gallery