Colin Spencer 1933- 2023 Oil on Board Titled: The Three Travelling Musicians Exhorting Daphne Not to Become A Free

A large figuritive abstract by the well know london writer and artist Colin Spencer. 

Oil on Board 

85 x 116 cm 

Excellent condition. 

Artist label to verso. 

£250

Colin was born in Thornton Heath, south London, the son of Harry Spencer, a master builder, and his wife, Gypsy (nee Heath). He wrote about his early years in the first part of a planned three-volume autobiography, Backing Into Light: My Father’s Son (2013). By all accounts it was not a happy childhood. Colin was educated at Brighton college and Brighton Art College, having decided early in life that he wanted to be an artist. In 1950 he was called up for national service, and, although a pacifist (and a lifelong humanist), served in the Royal Army Medical Corps until 1952.

After a period travelling around Europe he embarked on a career marked by its diversity and productivity. His drawings and stories appeared in publications including the London Magazine, Encounter, the Transatlantic Review, the Times Literary Supplement and the Observer – for the last of these he often illustrated Katharine Whitehorn’s column. He drew artists and writers including CP Snow, Evelyn Waugh and John Betjeman and in 1959 was commissioned by the London Magazine to draw EM Forster at 80. Forster sat for him in Cambridge, and 10 years later Colin also painted an oil portrait of the writer. The first of his nine novels, An Absurd Affair, set in Vienna, was published in 1961.

Colin was held in as high esteem by his contemporaries as he was by his readers. He could be demanding, but was a man of great charm. As a colleague he was generous and forceful, not without a certain asperity when dealing with people he considered fools. He was a fine cook and a most hospitable host, with a penchant for lively conversation, bringing the same vigour to social gatherings as he did to life in general. He was the antithesis of contemporary intellectual conventions, seeking to find connections between diverse aspects of human experience rather than limiting himself to a narrow field of specialisation.

In reality he was too much of a nonconformist to be neatly contained within any standard box. What stands out from all his works is the sheer energy of the man, combined with a keenness of mind, and a wide-ranging curiosity.