The New Hope Artists Colony: Robert Spencer

"Lime Kilns, Point Pleasant" by Robert Spencer

"Robert Spencer married Margaret Fulton on 27 February 1914. She had been a student of WIlliam Lathrop and was the niece of the well-known American marine and landscape painters, Alexander and Birge Harrison. Unfortunately, their marriage proved to be a most unhappy one. The unfortunate state of the Spencer household is preserved in an unpublished manuscript by their daughter, Tink Spencer, titled 'Mother Was a Problem - from Bucks County to Bedlam.'

Sadly Spencer suffered several nervous breakdowns beginning in the early twenties, which culminated in him taking his life in 1931. In his last interview, he stated:

'In these days of our super-mechanical age, there are still those who, despite modern efficiency, hard-boiled businessmen and correspondence school, worship idealism and who work with a view of creating a beautiful thing regardless of whether it can be translated into dollars and cents or traded on the exchange... Civilizations come and go, different forms of government occur, morals change - yet art persists. And Cervantes, I am convinced, wrote Don Quixote with a deeper purpose than he has been generally credited with. At any rate, when we are all weary, tired of facts, tired of efficiency, we turn to romance, and we find it more safely in pictures, in literature, in music - in short, in the arts.'

Spencer had a unique artistic perspective. He could find romance in the most ordinary of Pennsylvania views, making local mills into Spanish castles. But his lower-class scenes demonstrate his unique position in Pennsylvania Impressionism, specifically, as well as in American Impressionism in general. His work transcends the merely charming. His mundane viewpoint has left a legacy that is truly beautiful."

(Excerpts from "The Pennsylvania Impressionists" by Thomas Folk.)