Winter scene at St. Bees, Cumbria

St. Bees, Cumbria. (1940)

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Toward the end of the 1930's Gilbert Spencer took a teaching post with the Royal Accadamy of Art in London, and with the outbreak of war was evacuated to Ambleside in Cumbria.

While he was there he became friends with Josefina-de-Vasconcellos the sculptor and other friends included the poet Norman Nicholson and the well-known local farmer and breeder of Herdwick sheep Mrs Heelis (Beatrix Potter) before she died in 1943.

It was while here that he did war a certain amount of war artist work for the government, whatever he did was never published and because his expertise was in landscape, it can be assumed that his work followed that of another Cookham Artist, Frank Sherwin.