Frances Spalding

Frances Spalding (née Crabtree; born 16 July 1950)^[1][2] is a British art historian, writer and a former editor of The Burlington Magazine.

Frances Spalding CBE FRSL
Personal details
Born	Frances Crabtree (1950-07-16) 16 July 1950 (age 75)
Spouse	Julian Spalding ​ ​ (m. 1958; div. 1991)​
Alma mater	University of Nottingham
Occupation	Art historian and writer

Life

Frances Crabtree studied at the University of Nottingham and gained her PhD for a study of Roger Fry. She taught art history at Sheffield City Polytechnic (1978-1988) before becoming a freelance writer and curator.^[2] She returned to academic work to take up the post of lecturer in art history at Newcastle University in 2000.^[3] She was promoted to reader in 20th Century British Art in 2002 and appointed Professor of Art History in 2007.^[3]

Spalding became the Editor of The Burlington Magazine in September 2015, leaving in August 2016.^[4] From 2016 to 2018, she was a fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and an affiliate lecturer of the Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge.^[3][5]

Spalding specialises in 20th-century British art, biography and cultural history and her work includes essays, criticism and reviews. She curated the 2003 exhibition John Piper in the 1930s: Abstraction on the Beach at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London.^[6] She has also written a study of poet Stevie Smith and a biography of John and Myfanwy Piper. When reviewing John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art, The Independent said of Spalding: "At her scintillating best, she is both a brilliant encapsulator and shrewd summer-up; above all, an enthusiast and advocate whose wisdom makes you eager for her subject."^[7]

Spalding was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984.^[8] She was appointed as Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Birthday Honours 2005 for services to literature. She is a trustee of the Charleston Trust.^[9]

In 1974, Crabtree married Julian Spalding; the couple divorced in 1991.^[2]

Selected publications

• Magnificent Dreams: Burne-Jones and the Late Victorians (1978)
• Whistler (1979)
• Vanessa Bell (1979, ISBN 0 2977 8162 6)^[10]
• Roger Fry: Art and Life (1980)
• — (2016) [1983]. Vanessa Bell: Portrait of the Bloomsbury Artist. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-78453-241-3.
• British Art since 1900 (1986)
• Stevie Smith: A Critical Biography (1988)
• 20th Century Painters and Sculptors: Dictionary of British Art (1990)
• Dance Till the Stars Come Down: A Biography of John Minton (1991)
• Virginia Woolf: Paper Darts: the Illustrated Letters (ed) (1991)
• Duncan Grant: A Biography (1997)
• The Tate: A History (1998)
• Ravilious in Public: A Guide to Works by the Artist in Public Collections (2002)
• John Piper in the 1930s: Abstraction on the Beach (2003)
• Gwen Raverat: Friends, Family and Affections (2001)
• The Bloomsbury Group, National Portrait Gallery Insights (2005)
• John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art, Oxford University Press (2009, ISBN 978-0-19-956761-4)^[7]

Reviews

• Spalding, Frances (June 2011). "The contemporaneous past: reviving native traditions, in modern ways". Australian Book Review. 332: 16–17.
• Review of: Harris, Alexandra (2010). Romantic moderns: English writers, artists and the imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 9780500251713.