Study of Oasthouses, Cookham (recto)

The present work may relate to Mending Cowls, Cookham, (Tate Gallery, London), 1915, (Bell 26). As a boy, Spencer had looked onto the Cookham oasthouses from the nursery window of Fernlea, his childhood home in Cookham. He described his deep emotional attachement to the cowls in a note written in Glasgow in 1944: 'They seemed to be always looking at something and somewhere. When they veered round towards us they seemed to be looking at something above our own nursery window, and when they turned away to be looking down ... With their white wooden heads, they served as reminders of religious presence'. (see R. Carline, Stanley Spencer at War, London, 1978, p.44).

The subject of the minaret was explored by Spencer when, in 1922, he visited Yugoslavia in order to paint Muslim tombs and mosques, similar to those he had seen in Macedonia. The same minaret appears in Sarajevo, (South London Art Gallery), 1922, (Bell 86).