A Berkshire Farm

This large and ambitious early composition introduced many of the features that would recur in Spencer’s paintings of the 1920s: barns, wagons, and poultry. The foreground figures, however, are unique in his farmyard paintings, and are stylistically closer to Spencer’s major pre-war compositions, The Seven Ages of Man (1913-4, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario) and Summer (1914, UCL). An oil sketch for A Berkshire Farm was also exhibited at Reading 1964 (10).

Date: 1921
Inscriptions: On reverse: Gilbert Spencer 1921                                                                  Tags: Agricultural, Figures, Oil Paintings
Medium: Oil on canvas
Height (mm): 1067
Width (mm): 1219
Location: Private collection
Exhibition History: NEAC winter 1922 (8) as 'A Berkshire Fair'; Goupil 1923 (25); Reading 1964 (11)
Provenance: Muirhead Bone; by descent
Literature: Review of Goupil 1923 exhibition, unidentified publication, illus; Fleuron 1926 illus. pl. 5