An Artist's Progress
Commissioned in 1958 by Sir Charles Wheeler, President of the Royal Academy, for the end wall of the Royal Academy’s restaurant in Burlington House, for which Spencer was paid £1000 from the Leighton Fund. It is the most overtly autobiographical of Spencer’s works, following his career from childhood to his election as a Royal Academician. The National Gallery, which appears in the top right hand corner, may refer to the inclusion of four of his works in ‘British Painting Since Whistler’, the Gallery’s first ever temporary exhibition, of which he was rightly proud.
Date: 1959
Tags: Mural
Medium: Oil on canvas
Height (mm): 2962
Width (mm): 5639
Location: Royal Academy of Arts 03/236 (Grand Café)
Exhibition History: RA 1959 (503)
Provenance: Commissioned from the artist 1958 by the RA, Leighton fund
Literature: RA Illustrated 1959 illus. p. 9; Spencer 1974 pp. 173-4; Gough 2024 pp. 25, 294-5, illus. pp. 296-7
Date: 1959
Tags: Mural
Medium: Oil on canvas
Height (mm): 2962
Width (mm): 5639
Location: Royal Academy of Arts 03/236 (Grand Café)
Exhibition History: RA 1959 (503)
Provenance: Commissioned from the artist 1958 by the RA, Leighton fund
Literature: RA Illustrated 1959 illus. p. 9; Spencer 1974 pp. 173-4; Gough 2024 pp. 25, 294-5, illus. pp. 296-7