Daphne by the window, Northern Ireland

A young woman raises her hand to her head in a seemingly fleeting gesture. Her face catches the light from the window.

This sense of an instant just captured is contradicted by the artist’s meticulous attention to detail. The stripes of the couch, the folds of the shirt, the glimpse of the garden ... we see everything with almost unnatural clarity.

Stanley Spencer painted his niece Daphne while visiting his brother near Belfast. Throughout his life, he also sketched his friends, exploring what he described as his ‘exquisite appreciation of heads’.