Miss Ashwanden in Cookham by Stanley Spencer - with Robin Ince

Dr Janina Ramirez - Art Detective

Sir Stanley Spencer (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 World War One memorial while the latter was a commission for the War Artists' Advisory Committee during World War Two. 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 his compositions became more claustrophobic and his use of colour less vivid he maintained an attention to detail in his paintings akin to that of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Robin Ince @robinince is an English comedian, actor and writer. He is best known for presenting the BBC radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage with physicist Brian Cox.

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Producer: Dan Morelle

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