MANCHESTER.- This autumn, Manchester Art Gallery presents Stanley Spencer: Heaven in a Hell of War, an exhibition of work by acclaimed British painter, Stanley Spencer, on loan from the National Trust’s Sandham Memorial Chapel. Previously displayed at The Royal Academy of Arts, London in 1980, Somerset House in 2013 and Pallant House, Chichester this year, the exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery is the furthest north of the country that these remarkable war time works have been displayed.

Opening in the centenary year of the First World War, this exhibition features a series of large-scale arched canvases and side panels detailing scenes of the artist’s own wartime experiences. Working as a soldier within a hospital, his recollections were painted entirely from memory and focus on the domestic rather than the combative side to war. Spencer depicted the banal daily life that, in comparison to the battlefield, represented a ‘heaven in a hell of war.’ For Spencer, the menial became a form of reconciliation and his works evoke these everyday experiences from washing lockers, inspecting kit, sorting laundry to scrubbing floors and making tea, encounters in which the artist found spiritual resonance and sustenance.

These paintings, which took six years to create, are considered to be Spencer’s finest works. Spencer was not only one of Britain’s most renowned war artists, but was also a key figure in the development of figurative art in 20th century. Heaven in a Hell of War at Manchester Art Gallery provides the viewer with an opportunity to study these works in detail and analyse Spencer’s accomplished paintwork and sensitive use of colour.

Stanley Spencer was one of the most original British painters of his generation. His paintings combined the realism of everyday life with dreamlike visions drawn from his imagination. The artist spent most of his life in the sleepy village of Cookham, Berkshire. The area was a major source of inspiration and even provided the setting for his many Biblical paintings such as Christ Carrying The Cross.

Spencer led an individual path as an artist. Only after his death was he hailed as a major influence by the likes of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.

Spencer served in World War I as a medic and official war artist. He chronicled his experience in a series of vivid paintings commissioned for the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Hampshire.

His most celebrated works include Love Among The Nations and Self Portrait With Patricia Preece.