Study for Souvenir of Switzerland, 1933-34 (recto)

Souvenir of Switzerland, (Private Collection), 1933-34, (Bell 156) was commissioned by Sir Edward Beddington-Behrens who invited Spencer to stay with him at Saas Fee, high up in the Swiss Alps. Spencer was to paint landscapes in Switzerland in return for all expenses on the journey. He made a number of drawings of the local women in their Sunday dress and was enthusiastic about the churches with their primitive paintings and small wayside shrines; he explained later, in 1937 'Here and there in this broadside of earth were little chapels only about ten feet square and looking like lumps of sugar-loaf in the distance. I loved this mixture of religious life with the temporal life' (see K. Bell, op. cit., pp.430-31). However, it was not until his return to England that he began work on Souvenir of Switzerland. Beddington-Behrens explains that 'He liked to photograph a scene in his mind and then reproduce it long afterwards! "It is much better than if I painted it on the spot because if I feel it sufficiently intensely to paint it from memory it has got to live"'.
'Memory also enabled him to alter details of the composition, whereas in directly observed landscapes he felt compelled to include everything which he saw before him. His memory, therefore, acted as a kind of filter which collected only the most significant and moving details of his experience. This period of gestation was an important element in Spencer's approach to painting. It applied to the Burghclere Chapel, and to the late Cookham Regatta paintings, which were planned as early as 1940, but were not begun until the 50s. (see K. Bell, loc. cit.).