Cows at Cookham

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.