Stanley Spencer

My brother suggested a trip out to Bray and Henley-on-Thames today, and I suggested adding Cookham as I knew the Stanley Spencer Gallery was located there. All new places to me, although Henley and Bray are very familiar to my brother and SiL. These places by the Thames are all very attractive, and extraordinarily affluent.

The main image is the interior of the Gallery, which occupies a former chapel. I love Stanley Spencer’s paintings, to him Cookham was Heaven on Earth. To the right is a large canvas, “Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta” which was unfinished at his death in 1959.

Two wildlife extras, both of impressive insects I’ve never seen before. In the hotel garden on Monkey Island (how it got its name I don’t know, there have never been monkeys on this Thames island) a female stag beetle. Huge. And a very large moth sitting on a wall in Bray - a jersey tiger.