Spencer has characteristically placed this biblical episode in his own environment – a Cookham malthouse. The painting was installed as an altarpiece in a private chapel belonging to Henry and Margaret Slesser. They lived in Bourne End which was sufficiently close to Spencer’s home in Cookham for he and his brother to bound across there ‘with their pyjamas in their pockets’. Spencer’s planar use of colour is derived from the Early Renaissance artist Giotto (1267-1337); his passion for Italian Primitives had been inspired by Roger Fry’s lectures at the Slade. The use of red and white in the composition mirrors the symbolism of the bread and wine being distributed by Christ, and his impending sacrifice.

Spencer has painted Granny Tubb (modelled by her daughter Sarah) sinking to her knees in Cookham High Street. At the sight of a spectacular sunset caused by Halley’s Comet, she was convinced the apocalypse was nigh. She is presented with ‘emblems of what she is like’ and ‘all those things she loved’ by heavenly beings. Spencer described the scene as ‘a sort of apotheosis of the old lady’. It was painted as part of Spencer’s Church House project (conceived between 1932 until his death) which was an unrealised monument to his life and loves. This painting demonstrates how the themes of love, religion and Cookham were inextricably entwined for the artist. It was probably intended for a Pentecost series, where angels and saints visit Cookham.

Part of Spencer’s Domestic Scenes series, this painting was one of nine pictures celebrating ‘the special joy and significance’ of moments in his relationship with his first wife, Hilda Carline. A physically overwhelming Hilda is shown leaning over the diminutive Spencer, as together they look through a chest of drawers, from which collars spill out. Although this was painted in the run-up to his divorce from Hilda in 1937, Spencer has memorialised and idealised his failing marriage. Only days after the divorce, he married Patricia Preece with whom he had become obsessed. Their marriage failed from the first day and was never consummated. That relationship was immortalised in Spencer’s avant-garde series of nude studies of Patricia.

A series of eight paintings called The Beatitudes of Love were painted after the breakdown of Spencer’s marriage. Destined for the Church House project, they are more intimate or sexually orientated than the Domestic Scenes. Many of the pictures have stories attached, the narrative obscuring Spencer’s own emotional desolation. Spencer described the cluster of figures in Contemplation as having a ‘rapt gaze, as though they would never stop looking’. Many of the figures are grotesquely proportioned – a feature of Spencer’s work when he was working from his imagination. He maintained that ‘whatever that outward appearance may be it is an exquisite reminder of what is loved within, no matter what that exterior appearance may be.'

This presentation sketch was drawn in the final months of Spencer’s life, when the artist was dying of cancer. He used loose, parallel hatching in the background but on the face he has created depth and contrast with tight cross-hatching, a technique typical of Michelangelo. It is an unnerving image, with the artist gazing directly at the viewer, his gaunt, weathered face overwhelmed by the frame of his glasses. The sketch is a thought-provoking document of Spencer’s physical and mental state before he died. Spencer’s friend, Joy Smith, had commissioned him to paint a self-portrait. She had wanted an oil and did not find the drawing a true likeness, so he was encouraged to revisit the exercise, resulting in the canvas which is now at Tate.