Nancy Culliford Spender (née Sharp, formerly Coldstream; 29 October 1909 – 20 June 2001) was a British painter, described on her death as "much underrated".

Biography

Nancy Sharp was born on 29 October 1909 in

Truro Truro (; kw, Truru) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Cornwall, England. It is Cornwall's county town, sole city and centre for administration, leisure and retail trading. Its ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

, the daughter of Dr Hugh Culliford Sharp,

C.B.E. The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

, medical officer for the city of Truro. Her grandfather, Edward Sharp, had been a surgeon at Truro.Biographical History of Gonville and Caius College 1349-1897, ed. John Venn, vol II, 1713-1897, Cambridge University Press, 1898, p. 485 She attended

Cheltenham Ladies' College Cheltenham Ladies' College is an independent boarding and day school for girls aged 11 to 18 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. Consistently ranked as one of the top all-girls' schools nationally, the school was established in 1853 to pr ...

and the

Slade School of Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

from 1928 to 1931. At the Slade, she met and married her first husband,

William Coldstream Sir William Menzies Coldstream, CBE (28 February 1908 – 18 February 1987) was an English realist painter and a long-standing art teacher. Biography Coldstream was born at Belford, Northumberland, in northern England, the second son of coun ...

, with whom she had two daughters. In the late 1930s she had an affair with

Louis MacNeice Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely a ...

, illustrating two of his books and partially inspiring ''

Autumn Journal ''Autumn Journal'' is an autobiographical long poem in twenty-four sections by Louis MacNeice. It was written between August and December 1938, and published as a single volume by Faber and Faber in May 1939. Written in a discursive form, it sets ...

''. She met

Michael Spender Michael Alfred Spender (11 November 1906 – 5 May 1945) was an English explorer, surveyor, a leader in photo interpretation in the Second World War, and an RAF squadron leader. Personal life He was the eldest son of Harold Spender and Violet ...

(brother of the poet

Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the ...

) at this time, and fell in love. In 1942, she divorced Coldstream and married Spender. She worked as an ambulance driver during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

with the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service and her son

Philip Spender Philip Spender (1943- ) is a prominent public-sector fundraiser who has worked with Index on Censorship, the Writers and Scholars Educational Trust, and OneWorld Online. He is the son of the painter Nancy Spender and the explorer Michael Spender, ...

was born in 1943. Her second husband was killed in an air crash during the last week of the war. She took up work as an art teacher, which she continued till 1977, teaching at schools in

Lambeth Lambeth () is a district in South London, England, in the London Borough of Lambeth, historically in the County of Surrey. It is situated south of Charing Cross. The population of the London Borough of Lambeth was 303,086 in 2011. The area expe ...

and

Bromley Bromley is a large town in Greater London, England, within the London Borough of Bromley. It is south-east of Charing Cross, and had an estimated population of 87,889 as of 2011. Originally part of Kent, Bromley became a market town, char ...

. Nancy Spender's portrait paintings,

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

s and landscapes were painted in a figurative, realist manner. She exhibited regularly with the

London Group The London Group is a society based in London, England, created to offer additional exhibiting opportunities to artists besides the Royal Academy of Arts. Formed in 1913, it is one of the oldest artist-led organisations in the world. It was form ...

and at the

Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...

. After her retirement she increased her output of paintings and etchings. She was a committee member of the

Artists' International Association The Artists' International Association (AIA) was an organisation founded in London in 1933 out of discussion among Pearl Binder, Clifford Rowe, Misha Black, James Fitton, James Boswell, James Holland, Edward Ardizzone, Peter Laszlo Peri'Artist ...

for five years and also showed works with the

Women's International Art Club The Women's International Art Club, briefly known as the Paris International Art Club, was founded in Paris in 1900. The club was intended to "promote contacts between women artists of all nations and to arrange exhibitions of their work", and ...

. Having little interest in commercial sales, she did not have her first solo exhibition until 1979, which was held in a West End gallery run by a friend. Nancy Spender died on 20 June 2001 aged 91. Two of her portraits are now in the collection of the London's

National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to: *National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra *National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred *National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C. *National Portrait Gallery, London, with s ...

and another is held at

Sir John Soane's Museum Sir John Soane's Museum is a house museum, located next to Lincoln's Inn Fields in Holborn, London, which was formerly the home of neo-classical architect, John Soane. It holds many drawings and architectural models of Soane's projects, and ...

. Both the

Government Art Collection The Government Art Collection (GAC) is the collection of artworks owned by the UK government and administered by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The GAC's artworks are used to decorate major government buildings in t ...

and the

Ashmolean Museum The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of ...

in Oxford also have paintings by Spender.

References

External links

*
Portraits by Nancy Spender
in the collection of the

National Portrait Gallery, London The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spender, Nancy 1909 births 2001 deaths 20th-century English painters 20th-century English women artists Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Artists from Cornwall English women painters People educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College People from Truro