Hilda Carline’s painting of Elsie dates from 1929. There is a piece about Hilda’s marriage to Stanley Spencer here. It includes this quote: ‘Women artists, her sister-in-law Nancy Carline believes, often instinctively follow their husbands’ styles and Hilda was no exception. “Take the portraits they both painted of their maid Elsie. One review mistakenly attributed Hilda’s picture to Spencer. Stanley himself was so impressed with Hilda’s version that he kept it with him until he died.”‘ But this is debatable. One could argue that an artist falls in love with an artist (or a writer falls in love with a writer) whose style already feels familiar to them, that this is far more common than the attraction of stylistic opposites. Look at Harold and Laura Knight or Fred and Mary Elwell or Tirzah Garwood and Eric Ravilious, or indeed Stephen Bone and Mary Adshead (yesterday on the Post).