Apple Gatherers
- Artist: Sir Stanley Spencer
- Date: 1912–13
- Medium: Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 714 x 924 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Apple Gatherers” by Sir Stanley Spencer, painted in 1912‑13. Spencer was still a Slade student when he took on this commission – it was a subject set by the school’s drawing competition, and he was sent to a nearby orchard at Taunton for inspiration. He worked on it for a whole year, turning what might have been a simple farm scene into a quiet, almost sacramental tableau.
The canvas shows a family in the midst of picking apples. Two adults stand back‑to‑back, their arms intertwined like branches, yet they hold hands. Their children sit in the foreground, small and a bit child‑like in scale. Spencer says there is no symbolic meaning he intended – it’s simply a life‑like snapshot of rural harmony. The distorted proportions and lack of perspective echo the influence of Paul Gauguin, whom he’d seen in London, and hint at a proto‑primitive sensibility.
It was painted in his Wisteria Cottage studio in Cookham, a place that gave him a strong sense of connection with nature. Sir Edward Marsh presented the work to the Tate in 1946, and it has since become a touchstone for early 20th‑century British painting.
See it in person
Apple Gatherers is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
