A new beginning

Stanley Spencer was an english painter; a survivor of the devastation and torment that fell upon Europe during World War I, in which he worked as a volunteer with the Royal Army Medical Corps. Like in many other artists' cases, war found its way into his art.
Spencer worked on the painting above from 1924 to 1927, which means it was created after the wa.

The first thing we notice are the soft and pastel colours. Our eyes are meant to be drawn into the whiteness of the large building, which occupies almost half of the canvas. Everything is light, fragile and soft.
Only after this we notice what is really going on: This is a cemetery and dozens of people are rising up from their graves. The sight of so many figures, mostly dressed  in white, reminds us of heaven. White, pure souls, rising up and coming alive...The rebirth of Europe after the war.
What time of the day is it? Given the theme of this piece of art, it is probably sunrise....oh, wait! When we're looking for the sky, as an indicator of the time, we realize there is something we missed: A pathway. This pathway leads up and isn't all that light; in fact, it is quite shady. So we notice now that most of the painting is, afterall, green (The colour of hope) and not pastel beige as we first were led to believe.
As soon as we become aware of this little escape, we realise how tight and restrictive the graveyard truly is. The building is framing this piece almost entirely, with a completely different colour that is begging to be seen, and there is almost no sky. All the useless, distorted and empty graves are pushed in front of us and this restriction is boldly translated in the form of a black metal fence. Looking at the people who are portrayed, we see that they are not even happy. A woman at the back raises her hands up to heaven. All these people have merged with their  graves, and even though they are back to life and free , they don't go anywhere.

Could this be what the artist thought? Europe was rising from the dead and had a long path ahead leading up to the future...but everyone was still stuck in a barless prison.

Sara Fernandes