Unity Spencer (24 May 1930 – 18 October 2017) was a British artist. She was the daughter of artists

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 ...

and

Hilda Carline Hilda Anne Carline (1889–1950) was a British painter, daughter of the artist George Francis Carline, and first wife of the artist Stanley Spencer. She studied art under the Post-Impressionist Percyval Tudor-Hart, with her brothers Sydney and ...

Biography

Unity Spencer was born on 24 May 1930 in

Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...

, London, the second daughter of

and his wife

, both artists. She was educated at the

Badminton School Badminton School is an independent, boarding and day school for girls aged 3 to 18 years situated in Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol, England. Named after Badminton House in Clifton, Bristol, where it was founded, the school has been located at its ...

Wimbledon School of Art Wimbledon College of Arts, formerly Wimbledon School of Art, is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London specialising in theatre, screen and performance art. It is located in Wimbledon and Merton Park, South West London. ...

and the

Slade School of Fine 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 ...

. Following the break-up of the Spencers' marriage by the mid-1930s, Unity lived with her mother, while her elder sister, Shirin, was sent to live with a relative, and the sisters grew up apart. She had one-person shows at

Lauderdale Lauderdale is the valley of the Leader Water (a tributary of the Tweed) in the Scottish Borders. It contains the town of Lauder, as well as Earlston. The valley is traversed from end to end by the A68 trunk road, which runs from Darlington to ...

House in Highgate in 1993, the Boundary Gallery in

St John's Wood St John's Wood is a district in the City of Westminster, London, lying 2.5 miles (4 km) northwest of Charing Cross. Traditionally the northern part of the ancient parish and Metropolitan Borough of Marylebone, it extends east to west from ...

in 2001, and the

Fine Art Society The Fine Art Society is a gallery based in both London and in Edinburgh's New Town (originally Bourne Fine Art, established 1978). The New Bond Street, London gallery closed its doors in August 2018 after being occupied by The Fine Art Society si ...

Bond Street Bond Street in the West End of London links Piccadilly in the south to Oxford Street in the north. Since the 18th century the street has housed many prestigious and upmarket fashion retailers. The southern section is Old Bond Street and the l ...

in 2015. In 1961, she met Leslie Lambert (died 1971), and they had a son in 1963, but never married. In the last eighteen months of her life, she moved to live in

Cowbridge Cowbridge ( cy, Y Bont-faen) is a market town in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, approximately west of the centre of Cardiff. The Cowbridge with Llanblethian community and civil parish elect a town council. A Cowbridge electoral ward exists for e ...

, south Wales, with her son John and sister Shirin Spencer. A BBC documentary, ''Stanley and His Daughters'', shown after Unity's death, included interviews with both sisters in which they talked about their childhood and the decision to move in together. Spencer died of kidney failure on 18 October 2017. She was buried in

Cookham Cookham is a historic River Thames, Thames-side village and civil parishes in England, civil parish on the north-eastern edge of Berkshire, England, north-north-east of Maidenhead and opposite the village of Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, Bourne ...

, Berkshire, close to her mother.

References

1930 births 2017 deaths 20th-century English women artists 21st-century English women artists Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Alumni of Wimbledon College of Arts Artists from London Carline family English women painters People educated at Badminton School People from Hampstead {{UK-artist-stub