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拍品专文
'The painting was intended to be the central 'altarpiece' of the projected Hilda Chapel and was set on Hampstead Heath, the site of Spencer's courtship of Hilda in the 1920s. Spencer began to think about the painting in 1953, when he told Hilda (who had in fact died in November 1950 [and who he continued to write to for the rest of his life]), that he was planning to 'do a series about Hampstead and its Hilda associations [which is] comparable to the Regatta series' (Tate 733.1.1685, dated 8 April).
In another letter to Hilda written in 1954, Spencer described the composition, which at this time consisted of a series of drawings (733.1.1686): 'This belongs to the part of the Hilda series which deals with our Hampstead life. In this drawing there are several Hildas but the chief one is of her, what she called being with God. It is of course how I imagined she would stand. I kneeling down before her as she has her being.'
Spencer went on to explain that the painting is a manifestation of his love for Hilda, in a world which has been transformed (like the earlier Cookham Last Judgement paintings) into Heaven: 'I tried to make it a manifestation of the joy of our united souls. It is a kind of Vale of Health paradise or heaven ... Hilda is really in Heaven as she walks through the rubbish on Hampstead Heath. Can God have created in the manner of a Borough Council?'
All over the painting figures discover 'love letters' which they read with pleasure. Spencer recalled that the idea for the letters: '... comes from two things one is seeing the litter lying about the Heath and the other is the time I was at Burghclere. When there I did a lot of writing to you ... On that table [in the sitting room] those two or three hundred paged letters were written. And then I thought how nice if I could wander forth out into certain places I knew and write to you from there.'
In conclusion, Spencer summed up for Hilda the working methods which governed his approach to his compsoitions: 'As can be seen from my decriptions of this composition and indeed from the way I speak about my pictures, the cheif source of feeling in composing them is what is happening in them, what is the subject, what is the picture about? The consideration of that factor is what I always go to in the composing and realizing of the whole technique, the thing which determines everything, the forms, shapes, pattern design, colour or whatever one may call the various elements employed in making the picture.' (See K. Bell, op. cit., p.520).
In another letter to Hilda written in 1954, Spencer described the composition, which at this time consisted of a series of drawings (733.1.1686): 'This belongs to the part of the Hilda series which deals with our Hampstead life. In this drawing there are several Hildas but the chief one is of her, what she called being with God. It is of course how I imagined she would stand. I kneeling down before her as she has her being.'
Spencer went on to explain that the painting is a manifestation of his love for Hilda, in a world which has been transformed (like the earlier Cookham Last Judgement paintings) into Heaven: 'I tried to make it a manifestation of the joy of our united souls. It is a kind of Vale of Health paradise or heaven ... Hilda is really in Heaven as she walks through the rubbish on Hampstead Heath. Can God have created in the manner of a Borough Council?'
All over the painting figures discover 'love letters' which they read with pleasure. Spencer recalled that the idea for the letters: '... comes from two things one is seeing the litter lying about the Heath and the other is the time I was at Burghclere. When there I did a lot of writing to you ... On that table [in the sitting room] those two or three hundred paged letters were written. And then I thought how nice if I could wander forth out into certain places I knew and write to you from there.'
In conclusion, Spencer summed up for Hilda the working methods which governed his approach to his compsoitions: 'As can be seen from my decriptions of this composition and indeed from the way I speak about my pictures, the cheif source of feeling in composing them is what is happening in them, what is the subject, what is the picture about? The consideration of that factor is what I always go to in the composing and realizing of the whole technique, the thing which determines everything, the forms, shapes, pattern design, colour or whatever one may call the various elements employed in making the picture.' (See K. Bell, op. cit., p.520).