Study for (Sun)Bathers at Odney (recto)

The present drawing bears close resemblance to the oil Sunbathers at Odney (Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham), 1935, (Bell 182) which was painted as part of Spencer's Baptism series for the Church House; the setting was Odney Club, Cookham. The drawing also closely resembles various scrapbook drawings, for example Bathers at Odney, taken from Volume III, p.52. (See C. Leder, op. cit., no.114, p.91 (illustrated)). As Leder points out, the scarpbook drawings offer an interesting example of the artist re-working a theme in pencil some time after it had been defined in paint. Odney drawings date from as early as the 1920s.