Frances Spalding CBE, FRSL (née Crabtree, born 16 July 1950)^[1] 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.^[2]

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.^[3] 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."^[4]

Spalding was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984.^[5] 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.^[6]

Spalding became the Editor of The Burlington Magazine in September 2015, leaving in August 2016.^[7]

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)^[8]
• 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)^[4]

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.