The Bloom of the Season

Flowers often feature in Spencelayh's interiors, but they are rarely awarded the prominence given in this magnificent example, where roses are crowded profusely into one of the artist's favourite Toby jugs. The picture is one of only four awarded a full colour plate in Aubrey Noakes's monograph on the artist, and is an excellent example of how Spencelayh carefully positioned each object in his composition to create a balanced whole. Many props are familiar from other Spencelayh works - the blue and white ginger jar upper left, the reproduction of Landseer's Shoeing of 1844 behind the head of the old man, and the Toby Jug itself - seen on the table of Lot Thirteen - Spencelayh's Royal Academy exhibit of 1926, but if one of them were to be removed then the carefully contrived harmony would be shattered.

Spencelayh's career was remarkable in its longevity and idiosyncracy. Although he started to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1892, and showed his last picture there in 1958 shortly before his death at the age of ninety-three, he was never made an Academician or even an Associate. The only artistic body with which he became associated was the Royal Society of Artists, Birmingham, a city with which he had few associations. A voluble talker, if not by all accounts a great conversationalist, Spencelayh avoided gallery openings and other occasions where the artistic establishment gathered. He remained oblivious to artistic trends well into the twentieth century, but although the formula for his pictures rarely changed, each carry an individual resonance.