Stanley Spencer Gallery

Cookham was very important to Stanley Spencer, he called it ‘a Village in Heaven’ and it was an endless source of artistic inspiration throughout his life. After his death in 1959 friends and patrons determined to find a permanent home within the village in which to display paintings and drawings that would serve as a memorial to the artist. Those involved in the project included Joan George who lived for a time in the artist’s former house Fernlea and became the first honorary secretary, Gerard Shiel a solicitor and local collector of Spencer’s works, Donald Rademacher a former director of the John Lewis Partnership, and the Rev Michael Westropp vicar of Cookham who had extended hospitality to Spencer in his last years. In 1962 the Gallery opened within the former Wesleyan Chapel in the High Street which Spencer had attended as a child with his mother. In the catalog for the opening exhibition Lord Astor, a patron of Spencer and founder of the Gallery wrote:

This Gallery is in its nature modest. It can only show a selection of Stanley Spencer’s pictures though they will vary each year. But perhaps a great edifice would be less typical of Stanley than this Gallery which is in scale with the rest of the village and reflects the nature of Stanley; small, cheerful, very special and deeply loved.

On show were many lent works, a number of which now form a part of the permanent collection, including the monumental painting Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta, left unfinished at Spencer’s death. The practical arrangements of the hanging were supervised by Spencer’s former agent Dudley Tooth. The artist’s daughters Shirin and Unity attended the exhibition and have been great supporters of the Gallery over the years. The Gallery was then opened to the public, at first run by a full-time paid custodian but latterly run at every level very successfully by a team of volunteers.