
Stanley Spencer is one of the eccentric originals of English painting. This work was painted in 1936 in his native village of Cookham in Berkshire. Thomas Balston was a great friend of the Behrend family who commissioned Spencer's series of murals at the Oratory of All Souls in Burghclere (1927-1932). Mr Thomas Balston bequeathed to the Art Fund a large collection of pictures, drawings, and prints, with the request that his extensive collection of works by, after, and connected with John Martin (on whom he had written a monograph) should be offered to the Victoria and Albert Museum, that the Ashmolean Museum should be allowed to take what it wanted of the rest.
Thomas Balston.