The People & Portraits of Stanley Spencer’s Final Years

Wednesday 12 March 2025 at 2.00 pm at the Lowther Pavilion. Guests may attend the lecture – £10 pp (pay on door)

Lecturer: Amy Lim

This will be Dr Amy Lim’s first visit to The Arts Society Fylde. Amy is an art historian and curator, specialising in British fine and decorative arts from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. She is curator of the Faringdon Collection at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, and of the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham. She is also an exhibition researcher at Tate, contributing to British Baroque: Power and Illusion (2020) and ‘Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520-1920’ to be held at Tate Britain, 16 May-30 October 2024. Amy has degrees in History and Literature & Arts from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. She runs an online art dealership, and has published articles and essays on a variety of art-related topics from gothic garden monuments to female patronage.

The Lecture

Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) is one of the greatest British artists of the 20th century. Although less well known than his imaginative paintings, portraiture was also an important part of Spencer’s artistic practice, especially in his final decade, when he was in high demand as a commercial portrait painter. This lecture will explore Spencer’s views on portraiture, and the role it played in his life and work. Through his paintings, we will meet many of the people around him, from friends and neighbours to figures of national importance.

Caption: Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham. Lagosman, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons