Study for 'Love Among The Nations'

The present work is a study for Love Among the Nations, 1935, in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Keith Bell writes, 'The picture [Love Among the Nations] represents the breaking down of the spiritual and cultural barriers between the nations by means of the most intimate communion possible between two people - love-making. He wrote later "During the war, when I contemplated the horror of my life and the lives of those with me, I felt the only way to end the ghastly experience would be if everyone suddenly decided to indulge in every degree and form of sexual love, carnal love, bestiality, anything you like to call it. These are the joyful inheritances of mankind" ... In the picture therefore, men and women from different races fondle and embrace one another' (see exhibition catalogue, Stanley Spencer R.A., London, Royal Academy, 1980, p. 137).