Stanley Spencer
Not a Port Glasgow man but an artist from England who came to the yards to paint a series of pictures that would later become "Shipbuilding On The Clyde"
Spencer was a war artist during the first world war and at the outbreak of the second he was keen to be used again to depict the homefront in 1940.
He was sent to Lithgows in Port Glasgow and began to wander through the yard sketching what he saw. The workers were none too impressed with this man and his note book until they were informed that he was only an artist. This then presented another problem as the men no longer "behaved naturally" in his presence but crowded round to see what he was doing.
In the end to get them to act naturally they were bribed with portrait sketches.
Spencer had a very romantic veiw of the shipyards and was not trying to depict an acurate record of shipbuilding and life in the yard. There was also a vaguley spiritual and religious overtone to his paintings.
His paintings did not please Sir James Lithgow who was keen to see an accurate representation of his shipyard and shortly afterwards another artist was commissioned to complete more technical and conventional set of pictures.
Truth is the men in the yards were often drawing on the walls and chalk was always on hand as it was used for many purposes within shipbuilding. Jim Collins was working in Fairfield's and when evidence of his talent emerged he was commissioned to produce artwork for the ship he was building. Tom McDendrick who went from the yards to Glasgow School of Art, and many more..........................
Spencer Links
This site has all the panels from the Shipbuilding on the Clyde Exhibition.
This page last modified on Wednesday, March 05, 2003
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