The Art of Hilda Carline

A study of the art of Stanley Spencer's first wife

Author

Alison Thomas, edited by Timothy Wilcox, foreword by Frances Spalding

Publisher

Lund Humphries, London, 1999

Printing Details

First edition. Paperback. 26.5 × 21.5cm, 72pp.

Hilda Carline was the first wife of Stanley Spencer, yet the fact that she was herself an accomplished artist has been repeatedly overlooked. This book, long overdue, is the first to recognize Hilda Carline's own creative powers and charts a career which lasted half a century. Alison Thomas's text looks at the full range of Hilda's work, seen against the background of her complex relationship with Stanley Spencer. She discusses the two artists' troubled marriage, the proposed menage a trois with Stanley Spencer's second wife, Patricia Preece, and their final reconciliation at the end of Hilda's life.