Stanley Spencer: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings

The reputation of English visionary artist Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) has waxed and waned over the decades. This catalogue raisonne of his paintings, which combines 474 plates (314 in color) and an absorbing critical-biographical profile, should revive interest in an individualistic painter who welded the influences of the Pre-Raphaelites, Giotto, the Mexican realists and Futurism into highly personal allegories of peace, love, alienation and redemption. Bell, a University of Saskatchewan art historian who curated a Spencer exhibit at London's Royal Academy, unravels Spencer's mystical approach to painting, which was deeply rooted in the Bible. He discusses Spencer's obsessive courtship of Bloomsbury Group artist Patricia Preece; their marriage unleashed a welter of sexual imagery in Spencer's canvases. Featured here are religious pictures, war scenes, bustling satires of modern life, precise landscapes full of mystery and intimate portraits of friends and lovers. (Mar.)