Clearly an observed scene in a Cookham barn, this may be the ‘drawing of a sack of potatoes’ which the painter-etcher Ernest Lomsden noticed and admired. Spencer’s father therefore showed some of Stanley’s drawings to Lady Boston, his own patron at Hedsor church and a former student at the Slade. She gave Stanley some art lessons, paid for his tuition for a year at the Technical School at Maidenhead, 1907-8, and then recommended he try for the Slade. She paid his fees there from 1908 until he was awarded a scholarship in 1910. The drawing was signed again by Spencer at Dorothy Wooster’s request, hence the inscription, ‘Signed by me later / Stanley’.

Lent by a private collector