LONDON.-The Art Fund has helped the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull to purchase the preparatory study for a much-loved painting by Richard Carline already in its collection. Carline’s Study of Stanley Spencer (1924) has been reunited with the finished canvas, Gathering on the Terrace at 47 Downshire Hill, Hampstead thanks to a £6,750 Art Fund grant. Study of Stanley Spencer was purchased for £27,000.

Richard Carline (1896-1980) was a British artist and writer. While he lived in Hampstead in the 1920s he formed a group known as the Downshire Hill Circle, who regularly met at Carline’s home in Hampstead to sketch and discuss and exchange ideas.

Study of Stanley Spencer is a preparatory study for one of Richard Carline’s most important works, Gathering on the Terrace at 47 Downshire Hill, Hampstead, which was purchased by the Ferens Art Gallery in 1995 thanks to an Art Fund grant.

The painting depicts eight of Carline’s associates from the Downshire Hill Circle, including the artist Stanley Spencer, whose work had a huge influence on Carline.

Richard Carline was born in Oxford into a family of artists - his father, mother, brother and sister were all painters. Carline’s artistic output included landscapes and portraits, often of his contemporaries. After a short period teaching, Carline served in World War I and was appointed an Official War Artist. During World War II Carline supervised camouflage of factories and airfields. In 1946-47 he was appointed as the first Art Counsellor to UNESCO.