Frances Spalding

{{Infobox officeholder

| honorific_prefix =

| name = Frances Spalding

| honorific_suffix = {{postnominals|country=GBR|size=100%|CBE|FRSL}}

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| birth_name = Frances Crabtree

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1950|07|16|df=yes}}

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| death_date = {{Death date and age|YYYY|MM|DD|YYYY|MM|DD|df=yes}}

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| spouse = {{marriage|Julian Spalding|1958|end=div}}

| occupation = Art historian and writer

| alma_mater = University of Nottingham

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Frances Spalding FRSL (née Crabtree; born 16 July 1950){{cite book| chapter=Spalding, Prof. Frances | title=Who's Who 2013 | publisher=A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing | year=2013 | url=http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whoswho/U35729 |access-date=12 January 2013 }} Oxford University Press, December 2012; online edition, November 2012.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6J8xDWDqOkEC&dq=%22Spalding,+Frances%22&pg=PA540|title=The International Who's Who of Women 2002|location=London|publisher=Europa Publications|year=2001|page=540|isbn=9781857431223 }} is a British art historian, writer and a former editor of The Burlington Magazine.

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 (19781988) before becoming a freelance writer and curator. She returned to academic work to take up the post of professor of Art History at Newcastle University in 2000.

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.{{cite web| url=http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/john-piper-in-the-1930s-abstraction-on-the-beach/ | title=John Piper in the 1930s – Abstraction on the Beach | publisher=Studio International | access-date=14 February 2014 }}

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."{{cite news|author=Dunnett, Roderic |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/john-piper-myfanwy-piper-lives-in-art-by-frances-spalding-1823824.html | title=John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: lives in art, By Frances Spalding | work=The Independent |date=20 November 2009 | access-date=15 February 2014 }}

Spalding was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984.{{cite web|url=http://www.rslit.org/content/fellows |title=Royal Society of Literature: All Fellows |publisher=Royal Society of Literature |access-date=10 August 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100305070326/http://www.rslit.org/content/fellows |archive-date=5 March 2010 |df=dmy }} 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.{{EW charity|1107313|The Charleston Trust}}

Spalding became the Editor of The Burlington Magazine in September 2015, leaving in August 2016.{{Cite news |url=https://www.thetimes.com/article/editor-quits-oldest-art-magazine-after-brush-with-rebellious-staff-9klxkspjz |title=Editor quits oldest art magazine after brush with staff |last=Malvern |first=Jack |date=7 October 2016 |work=The Times |access-date=25 July 2019}}

In 1974, Crabtree married Julian Spalding; the couple divorced in 1991.

Selected publications

Magnificent Dreams: Burne-Jones and the Late Victorians (1978)
Whistler (1979)
Vanessa Bell (1979, {{ISBN|0 2977 8162 6}}){{cite web | url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1710324.Vanessa_Bell | title=Vanessa Bell by Frances Spalding | publisher=Goodreads | access-date=12 January 2016}}
Roger Fry: Art and Life (1980)
{{cite book|last=Spalding|first=Frances|author-link=Frances Spalding|author-mask=1|title=Vanessa Bell: Portrait of the Bloomsbury Artist|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OOMtCwAAQBAJ|date=2016|orig-year=1983|publisher=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}})

=Reviews=

{{cite journal |last=Spalding |first=Frances|date=June 2011 |title=The contemporaneous past: reviving native traditions, in modern ways |journal=Australian Book Review |volume=332 |pages=16–17}}
Review of: {{cite book |title=Romantic moderns: English writers, artists and the imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper |last=Harris |first=Alexandra |year= 2010|publisher=Thames & Hudson |isbn=9780500251713}}