Records of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, including minute books, agreements, rules, acceptances of membership, papers relating to annual dinners, press cuttings, and annual exhibiton catalogues. Please note that access to the collection is by written permission from the depositors only.

A sketchbook by Stanley Spencer, c 1919-1924 with one loose sketch of Gilbert Spencer by Stanley Spencer, c 1906-1908.

The Sketchbook contains 37 pages with sketches on front and back of pages, 4 loose sheets and 2 torn pages. Most sketches are made in pencil. However, 12 sketches are finished in pencil and wash, and 1 sketch in pencil and oil.

The sketchbook spans Spencer's time spent with the Slessers in Bourne End from late 1919-1920, with Muirhead Bone and his wife at Petersfield in 1921 and his stay with Henry Lamb in Poole, Dorset in April 1923 where he produced designs for what would later become the Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclere. The sketchbook is significant in that it includes initial ideas for a number of post-First World War religious works, including some Tate-owned paintings, notably 'Christ Carrying the Cross', 1920, 'The Robing of Christ and the Disrobing of Christ', 1922, and 'The Resurrection, Cookham', 1924-26. It also includes a number of designs (many in pencil and wash) for Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclare which are amongst some of the earliest sketches that Spencer created for this commission.

The loose sketch of Spencer's brother, Gilbert Spencer, is a pre-Slade School sketch of c 1906-1908 of his magnum opus.