Watercolour over pencil, 39.5 by 60 cm (15 ½ by 23 ½ ins)

Provenance: with the Piccadilly Gallery, London

Between 1919 and 1920 Spencer lived with the judge Sir Henry Slesser and his wife Margaret, a stay that resulted in a series of remarkable commissions that would culminate in his masterpiece The Resurrection, Cookham of 1924-7. At around the same period Spencer also embarked on a number of other significant projects, one of which took him to the progressive Bedales School near Petersfield in Hampshire. Here he stayed with his fellow artist Muirhead Bone and began to sketch ideas for an ultimately unrealised scheme for the school’s memorial hall. A number of studies exist for this of which the present work is amongst the strongest. A closely related painting also resulted from the project which was sold by Spencer’s dealers Arthur Tooth in 1960.