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Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 09 - Early visionary period
Identifier
019375
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Christ's entry into Jerusalem
Spencer’s involvement in the First World War marked the end of his early visionary period:
My ideas were beginning to unfold in fine order when along comes the war and smashes everything. When I came home (from the war) the divine sequence had gone. I just opened a shutter in my side and out rushed my pictures anyhow. Nothing was ever the same again.
Despite this, in 1920, Spencer embarked on a series of paintings depicting Christ’s Passion - the events leading up to the crucifixion. In Christ Carrying the Cross 1920, for example, Spencer wanted to ‘take the inmost of one’s wishes, the most varied religious feeling in one’s thought, and to make it an ordinary fact of the street like the edge of the roof.'
A description of the experience
Christ carrying the cross
