Beatitudes of Love 8: Worship
In 1937-38, the painter Stanley Spencer produced an intimate series of eight paintings called The Beatitudes. The series was created during a time of personal crisis, and it explored the difficult topics of love, desire, and infatuation. In mid-1937 Spencer divorced from his first wife Hilda and then married Patricia Preece. The marriage with Preece was a failure, and she continued to live with her partner, the painter Dorothy Hepworth. In The Beatitudes Spencer explored his emotional turmoil, dedicating each painting to a specific element that relates to love and sexual attraction.
The scheme of the series, in which each painting focuses on a particular theme is similar to an earlier series from 1935-1936 called Domestic Scenes which dealt with intimate interactions between Spencer and his first wife Hilda, such as Choosing a Petticoat (1936) and Going to Bed (1936). The message of domestic harmony and togetherness seems to dissipate in The Beatitudes, a series that centers around his relationship with Preece. The figures in the series are grotesque and comic characters, often distorted and disfigured. The male figures in the series tend to have characteristics attributed to Spencer, they are usually smaller and dominated by their female counterparts.
Beatitude 8: Worship (1938) follows this dynamic, the male figures that resemble Spencer seem to be dwarfed and overwhelmed by the female figures. In the foreground, the two men are in kneeling positions as the large female bodies tower over them. Similarly, the two further figures seem to be absorbed by the group of women in front of them. The dominant figure in white is usually interpreted as Preece. She is surrounded by numerous gifts: cased jewelry, perfume, coins, and wads of money. The theme of gifts had personal significance to Spencer. He lavished Preece with expensive presents, accumulating substantial amounts of debt that almost led him to financial ruin. In particular, the jewelry placed directly underneath Preece’s dress highlights the transactional nature of the relationship: the man bows down powerless, buying gifts in return for the woman’s favor.
According to Spencer, each painting portrayed “the twined and unified souls of two persons. The composition turns two into one person and becomes a single organism”. In paintings like Beatitude 8: Worship, Spencer purposefully distorted the figures, making them grotesque and ugly to the viewer. This made the series unpopular with Spencer’s older patrons. One of them, Wilfred Evill, recalled talking to Spencer about Beatitude 8: Worship: “I asked him why he had made the desired ladies so hideous, he said: ‘I have painted them as they are, go and look at them in the Tube’”. The statement indicates that Spencer wanted to express his emotional response to different interactions and attitudes through these distortions. For Spencer, the series was not satirical, instead, it represents his profound insights on human love and desire. In this way, the artist suggests that human love, even in its highest form should not be expressed through beauty, but rather through the grotesque figures in The Beatitudes.
