Summer Evening, Hook End Farm

One of a trio of paintings, with Summer Evening, Durdham Downs (c. 1958-64, Royal West of England Academy) and Summer Evening, Burden’s Farm (c. 1958-64, untraced). Although it reprises many of the elements of Spencer’s farmyard paintings of the 1920s and 1930s, this is principally a work of memory and imagination, utilising two separate viewpoints: 'Walking down from Hare Green with Ursula we first saw the farm, as I have painted it with the dark Hook End woods rising behind. By the time we had dropped down to talk to the farmer, Mr Ambler, my viewpoint had changed, see-saw fashion, and I was able to get the best of both worlds’ (Spencer 1974, p. 177).

Date: 1957
Inscriptions: G.S. 1957
Tags: Agricultural, Figures, Oil Paintings
Medium: Oil on canvas
Height (mm): 1515
Width (mm): 1520
Location: Bristol Museum and Art Gallery K4656
Exhibition History: RA 1957 (212); Reading 1964 (69); FAS 1974 (41) illus. b&w; British Painting 1952-1977, Royal Academy, 1977
Provenance: FAS; Purchased with the assistance of the Gulbenkian Foundation, 1978
Literature: RA Illustrated 1957 p. 16; Spencer 1974 pp. 177-8; Gough 2024 pp. 198 & 289, illus. pp. 292-3