Cookham - church and angel

We had walked round the churchyard on the afternoon of our arrival (see previous post). One of the Stanley Spencer paintings that we saw in the gallery the following morning was:

The Angel, Cookham Churchyard (c.1936-37)

The statue of the Angel stands at the entrance to Cookham Churchyard, a place of special significance to Stanley Spencer.  This is the second version of the painting and is slightly smaller than the first and has a more serene autumnal feel to it.  It is the only known instance of Spencer repeating a subject.  The work was painted for the artist Gwen Raverat, granddaughter of Charles Darwin, whom Spencer had met and become friendly with at the Slade. 

This intrigued me, as I couldn't immediately visualise whether this was a realistically possible perspective, or wholly artistic licence by the painter. So we returned to the churchyard - my camera was, by this time, packed in my luggage back at the inn, so I had to make do with my phone. The poor light and dull grey sky weren't conducive to great photography . . . and a lot of stooping under bushes and clambering over brambles was involved . . .

The leafy branches in the painting are definitely artistic licence - the reality is a straggly yew tree! I could probably have got closer to the exact perspective of the painting if I'd had a copy of it with me to refer to - I was working from memory, and didn't quite get the angle right, but it was an interesting experiment.