A painting by the 20th-century British artist Stanley Spencer, which has not been on public view for almost six decades, is expected to fetch up to £5m at auction in June.
Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta: Punts by the River has remained in private collection since it was bought in 1959, the year Spencer died. The painting was the last to be completed in a series in which the artist portrayed the Resurrection in the context of a regatta in the Berkshire village of Cookham.
Sotheby’s, which is auctioning the painting, will briefly exhibit it to allow Spencer enthusiasts a rare sighting. It was last on public view at Worthing Art Gallery in the autumn of 1961.
Spencer planned seven paintings in the series Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta. Six smaller works were completed, but the enormous centrepiece was unfinished. It now hangs in the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham, the artist’s beloved home village.
Punts by the River, completed in 1958, like all Spencer’s Cookham paintings, connects epic and domestic themes. It depicts a group of girls in summer dresses, sitting in a punt. The low, cushioned seats mean their simple summer dresses ride up to show off a tangle of bare limbs.
The girls were likely to be based on villagers known to the artist, said Frances Christie, Sotheby’s head of modern and postwar British art. “They’re probably working at the regatta, taking a break. These punts were an unattainable world, they were really expensive to rent during regatta week.”
In the background, a young man, apparently naked, is trying to break into their circle. His bare feet intrude into the girls’ punt and a long bony finger points at the group. It is thought to be a portrayal of Stanley as a young man.
“He’s a curious figure, but it’s clearly an image of Spencer in his youth,” said Christie. “The fact that he’s naked and in a contorted pose – almost like an angel or a cherub – is very intriguing. It feels like there’s sacred presence there.”
Like all his Cookham paintings, the work is a social commentary on the village. “Everyday goings-on get elevated because he uses religious subject matter. He saw that using the Christian story was a way of, in his mind, raising his beloved Cookham from an everyday village.”
The detail of the painting – the wood of the punt, the cushions, the flesh of the girls’ limbs – make “you almost feel that you’re sitting there with them. It really shows off what an incredible draughtsman he was.”
Great works by Spencer rarely come on the market because much is in public collections. “All the major museums in Britain have great Spencers, and they’re also in collections around the world,” said Christie.
“The work that does come on to the market more often are his commercial commissions, the work he did to pay the bills – still lives, landscapes. But the work that was most important to Spencer himself are these more personal, visionary works that relate to Cookham which place these incredible religious subjects in a normal English village. These are the works he rated above everything else, and that’s what makes this [sale] really significant.”
Christie said she hoped Punts by the River would be bought by “another incredible collector who appreciates it as much as the family who bought it in the late 1950s”.
The current record price for a Spencer painting was set in 2013 for another in the series, Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta: Conversation Between Punts, which fetched £6m.
As well as painting grand biblical scenes in the prosaic village setting, Spencer created the most important artistic first world war memorial in the UK, the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Burghclere, Hampshire.
An exhibition of works by Spencer commissioned and bought by his patrons – including the unfinished centrepiece of the Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta series – is currently on show at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in the artist’s home village.
Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta: Punts by the River will be on view to the public as part of Sotheby’s Modern British Week, 8-12 June
