Revealing Genius, Conserving Art: Stanley Spencer’s Final Masterpiece

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This autumn and winter, the Stanley Spencer Gallery invites visitors to witness the scientific analysis of a work of art. For the first time since 2012, Stanley Spencer’s monumental unfinished painting, Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta, will be brought down from its elevated wall position in the gallery and displayed at eye level. Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta is one of Spencer’s largest and most ambitious works, measuring over 5 metres long, but was left incomplete at the time of his death in 1959. The exhibition opens on 6 November and runs until 29 March 2026.

Not only will visitors be able to study this masterpiece up close, but they will also learn about how science helps to understand the making of a work of art and how Stanley Spencer himself worked.  On certain days during the exhibition, Olivia Leake, a conservator in her final year of the Restoration and Conservation of Easel Paintings MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art, will work in the gallery, carefully examining the canvas to reveal new insights into Spencer’s creative process.  From pigments and brushwork to the methods he used to transfer his detailed sketches, this close study offers both a deeper understanding of the artist and essential knowledge for preserving the work.

As an unfinished work, Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta offers a rare glimpse into Spencer’s working methods. Viewers can follow the section-by-section progression of his composition - a disciplined approach inspired by Renaissance fresco painting, developed during his time at the Slade School of Fine Art.

Spencer first began exploring ideas for this composition in the 1920s, but it wasn’t until Christmas 1951 that the vision truly crystallised. He sketched late into the night, producing hundreds of preparatory drawings in pencil and coloured crayons, often on whatever paper came to hand - from fine art stock to humble butter paper. The sheer ambition of the work required him to paint in cramped conditions in his Cookham Rise home, working on small, unrolled sections of the canvas while perched on a stool atop a trestle table.

The exhibition will build on the Gallery’s summer exhibition That Marvellous Atmosphere: Stanley Spencer and Cookham Regatta, which explored the spiritual themes of Christ Preaching and the significance of the Cookham Regatta in Spencer’s life. This next chapter will shift the focus to his studio practice - from early student exercises to his boldest late experiments revealing the meticulous drawing habits and inventive working methods that shaped one of his greatest artistic undertakings. 

The exhibition will include some of Spencer’s most iconic paintings, including The Last Supper (1920), St. Veronica (1920), Neighbours (1936), and Englefield House (1951) which illustrate the stylistic transformation in Spencer’s work, and the shift from the imaginative to the photographic. 

Curator, Amanda Bradley Petitgas said: “At the end of Spencer’s life, in Christ Preaching, he returned to his youthful evocations of religious visions in Cookham, creating a work that is both triumphant and nostalgic.”