Aberdovey

This large, imaginative figure composition draws on the artist's memories of an idyllic holiday in Wales the previous summer. The distant hills are recognisable from his landscape Bryn-Og, painted during the trip (1952, Reading Museum). In concept and mood, it shares many similarities with Spencer's large painting A Hebridean Memory (1949-51), completed two years earlier, which also recalled an idyllic seaside holiday.

Date: 1953
Tags: Figures, Oil Paintings
Medium: Oil on canvas
Height (mm): 900
Width (mm): 1860
Location: Private collection
Exhibition History: RA 1953 (609); 'Fifty Years of British Art, Golden Jubilee Exhibition', Cartwright Memorial Hall, Bradford, 1954
Provenance: Artist's estate; Sotheby's London 3 November 1982 lot 137; Liss Llewellyn; private collection
Literature: RA Illustrated 1953 p. 32; Gough 2024 p. 264, illus. pp. 290-1