Stanley Spencers The Resurrection of the Soldiers v Francisco de Goyas Third of May 1808
The paintings I am going to be writing about are “The Resurrection of the Soldiers” by Sir Stanley Spencer and “Third of May, 1808” by Francisco de Goya. ... Sir Stanley Spencer was born on the 30th of June 1891, in Cookham-on-Thames. ... “The Resurrection of the Soldiers” was painted from a series of sketches, his exhibition The Resurrection, Cookham (1924-6) created a stir at the time. In the background of the painting there is a dark, dreary nightfall over a gloomy battlefield filled with white crosses and the corpses of soldiers and horses. The middle distance is slightly brighter and after what is almost a fence of crosses both the horses and the young soldiers can be seen being reborn. The foreground of the painting shows a pile of white crosses and the faces of adolescent soldiers at their resurrection. ... Spencer created what could be described as a path of crosses moving down the painting, from the dark battlefield filled with death to the bright resurrection of the young soldiers. Perspective has been used to create depth and distance in this painting; the edges of the soldiers become less distinct as the objects go into the distance but the edges of the white crosses are still quite still distinct as they move into the distance. ... The darkest shades of grey and brown are furthest away in the background representing the death that is in that area; at the foreground of the painting there is larger number of the snow white crosses making it much brighter representing the rebirth of the soldiers.