Angels and Dirt: The life and work of Stanley Spencer Creative Conversation
Since Stanley Spencer’s death in 1959, his work has influenced the vision of many — Freud, Bacon, and Emin to name the most prominent — and his abilities and fascinations continue to be wondered and talked about amongst artists. In this talk, Amanda Bradley Petitgas (Trustee and Chair of the Exhibitions Committee at the Stanley Spencer Gallery), Dr Amy Lim (Curator at the Stanley Spencer Gallery) and Julian Bell (artist and writer) discussed Spencer’s life, work, and motivations; whether it be through his Cookham landscapes, non-religious and religious fascinations, or his famous series of raw and emotionally charged explorations of the human form.
Amanda Bradley Petitgas
Amanda is an art historian who specialises in Stanley Spencer. Whilst working as a paintings and sculpture curator at the National Trust, she curated Stanley Spencer: Heaven in a Hell of War at Somerset House and Pallant House, which exhibited Spencer’s works from Sandham Memorial Chapel. She now chairs the Stanley Spencer Gallery Exhibitions Committee, and curates many of the exhibitions at the Gallery, including Patron Saints: Collecting Stanley Spencer (2018). She has been a Trustee since 2016.
Since graduating from the Courtauld Institute of Art (MA, 2002) she has worked at the University of Cambridge, the National Gallery and for the National Trust. She has published on sixteenth-century Venice, Rubens, the history of collecting and Modern British art. She is a co-founder and Chair of the Athena Art Foundation, a public education charity which promotes the understanding of pre-modern art.
Dr Amy Lim
Amy is a historian by training. Amy holds an MA in History from the University of Cambridge, an MSt in Literature and Arts and DPhil in History from the University of Oxford. Her doctoral thesis, 'Art in Aristocracy in late Stuart England', researched aristocratic art patronage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, taking in some of England's best-loved country houses, including Chatsworth, Petworth and Burghley. Alongside running 'Amy Lim Art & Antiques', Amy continues to research and publish as an academic art historian. Articles and essays have appeared in Apollo, The Georgian Group Journal, Art & the Country House, ed. Martin Postle (Paul Mellon Centre, 2020), Furniture History, First World War Studies and Burlington. She has also written for exhibition catalogues, including British Baroque: Power and Illusion, ed. Tabitha Barber (Tate Publishing, 2020) and Now You See Us: /women Artists in Britain 1520-1920, ed. Tabitha Barber (Tate Publishing, 2024).
Amy is the Curator of the Faringdon Collection at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, an important and diverse collection of fine and decorative arts that is privately run within a National Trust country house. She is also a freelance researcher and curator. Recent projects have included researching Victorian women artists for the exhibition Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520-1920, (Tate Britain, 2024), and compiling an online catalogue of the works of twentieth century English landscape painter Gilbert Spencer RA. Previously Amy worked on the exhibition 'British Baroque: Power and Illusion' (Tate Britain, 2020), and in 2021 was a Junior Teaching Fellow at the Ashmolean Museum. She is a volunteer curator at the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham, where she curated 'Mind and Mortality: Stanley Spencer's Final Portraits' (2021) and 'Most Loved Works in the Stanley Spencer Gallery' (November 2022-March 2023).
Julian Bell
Julian Bell is a painter and writer whose work spans murals, portraits, and large narrative compositions. He is the author of several acclaimed books on art history and theory. His books include 'What is Painting?' And 'Vincent Van Gogh.' He often contributes to the London Review of Books, and New York review of Books.