Activity at Tree Cottage No. 2, 1967

Gilbert Spencer RA (1892 - 1979)

RA Collection: Art

On free display in Collection Gallery

Between 1936 and 1970 Gilbert Spencer lived and worked at Tree Cottage in the town of Upper Basildon, Berkshire. Gilbert usually worked outdoors but in winter would work from his cottage windows or in what he called his ‘little Colt studio’ in the garden. In his memoirs, Spencer explained that when he entered the studio ‘I hated it so much that I knocked it about, and messed it up to get it more in sympathy with my feelings for painting in odd corners, or bedrooms, indoors.’ By the time he painted this self-portrait, however, the thought of leaving the cottage was ‘unthinkable’ to him.