Leg Of Mutton Nude
''Double Nude Portrait: The Artist and his Second Wife 1937'' (also known as the ''Leg of mutton nude'' portrait) is an oil on canvas painting by British artist Stanley Spencer. It depicts Spencer and his soon-to-be second wife, Patricia Preece, beside a raw leg of lamb. The painting is sexually charged: Spencer's second wife was a lesbian in a long-term relationship when they married, and their marriage was never consummated. The painting is held by the Tate Gallery, which describes it as "probably now Spencer's most famous picture". The painting is one of seven portraits that Spencer painted of his wives between 1933 and 1937, all nude or semi-nude: one of his first wife, Hilda Carline; four of his second wife, Patricia Preece; and two double portraits of Spencer and Preece together. Unusually for Spencer, who usually painted portraits from memory, these seven were painted from life. Spencer and Preece are depicted naked, painted in an explicitly realist style, with close ...
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Stanley Spencer
Sir Stanley Spencer, CBE RA (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959) was an English painter. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the small village beside the River Thames where he was born and spent much of his life. Spencer referred to Cookham as "a village in Heaven" and in his biblical scenes, fellow-villagers are shown as their Gospel counterparts. Spencer was skilled at organising multi-figure compositions such as in his large paintings for the Sandham Memorial Chapel and the ''Shipbuilding on the Clyde'' series, the former being a First World War memorial while the latter was a commission for the War Artists' Advisory Committee during the Second World War. As his career progressed Spencer often produced landscapes for commercial necessity and the intensity of his early visionary years diminished somewhat while elements of eccentricity came more to the fore. Although hi ...
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Patricia Preece
Patricia Preece, Lady Spencer (22 January 1894 – 19 May 1966), born Ruby Vivian Preece, was an English artist, associated with the Bloomsbury Group, and the second wife of painter Stanley Spencer, for whom she modelled. It was later discovered that nearly all of the artwork exhibited and sold by Preece was painted by her lifelong lover, Dorothy Hepworth. As a teenager, in 1911, Preece was involved in the death of dramatist W. S. Gilbert. While swimming in his lake, she lost her footing and called out; the 74-year-old Gilbert dived in to assist her, but he died of a heart attack. She soon adopted the name Patricia and became engaged, but her progressive views displeased her fiancé, who terminated their engagement. In 1918 Preece met Hepworth at the Slade School of Fine Art. After further studies in Paris, the two returned to Britain. Throughout their lives, the gregarious Preece exhibited and sold the shy Hepworth's paintings under her own name, while Preece painted very littl ...
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