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Girls Returning from a Bathe (1936)

Painting, Oil on canvas, 864mm x 610mm
Two girls returning from a bathe

This painting belongs to Spencer’s ‘Baptism’ series. Encircled by tyre inner tubes that echo the circular window of the Odney Club, two girls return ‘from a baptism’ at Odney Pool. Like the figures in the ‘Domestic Scenes’ series, the girls will proceed to the wedding feast of the related ‘Marriage at Cana’ theme. At this stage in his career, the fertility of Spencer’s imagination led to a proliferation of overlapping themes. As so often in his oeuvre, an apparently everyday scene carries a religious dimension.

Lent by a private collector