DescriptionOil on canvas, 1936. Painted between the wars, peace prevails, and there is time for leisure activities. Boats await, the path running along the river beckons and it is high summer. Cookham’s Holy Trinity Church can just be discerned, reminding of Spencer’s preoccupations, and perhaps – since for Spencer the naturalistic and the spiritual were so much intertwined – the garden, with its roses and nasturtiums, hints at the paradisical. But mainly there is sheer joy portrayed in this scene of boats and punts, river and the garden.
