The Ten Commandments: Making a Graven Image (alt. titles: Making of the Golden Calf, Women Sculpting a Bull)

This is one of a set of ten oil paintings based on Spencer’s illustrations for The Ten Commandments, commissioned by Robert Gathorne-Hardy in 1927 and published by the Mill House Press in 1934. The scene relates to the second commandment: ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’ The paintings were exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in February 1939. A proof copy of the corresponding lithograph is annotated by the artist in relation to the present painting, ‘September 1938/Mrs Duncan Macgregor Australia’. Christine Macgregor, who along with her husband Duncan had become friends with Spencer while he was painting the mural scheme at Balliol College, Oxford, bequeathed this work to the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1975, together with three other paintings by Spencer.

Date: 1938
Inscriptions: lr: GILBERT SPENCER
Tags: Oil Paintings, Biblical
Medium: Oil on canvas
Height (mm): 665
Width (mm): 535
Location: Art Gallery of South Australia 758P19
Provenance: Bequest of Christine Margaret MacGregor 1975