Stanhope was the son of
John Spencer Stanhope of
Horsforth and
Cannon Hall, a classical antiquarian who in his youth explored Greece. The artist's mother was Elizabeth Wilhemina Coke, third and youngest daughter of
Thomas William Coke of
Norfolk, first
Earl of Leicester; she and her sisters had studied art with
Thomas Gainsborough. Stanhope had one older brother,
Walter, who inherited
Cannon Hall, and four sisters, Anna Maria Wilhelmina, Eliza Anne, Anne Alicia, and Louisa Elizabeth. Anna married QC
Percival Pickering and became the mother of painter
Evelyn de Morgan, chemist and horticulturist
Percival Spencer Umfreville Pickering; Rowland Neville Umfreville and author
A. M. W. Stirling. Not inheriting the family estates left Stanhope free to make a commitment to art. While a student at Oxford, he sought out
George Frederic Watts as a teacher and was Watts' assistant for some of his architectural paintings. Spencer-Stanhope travelled with Watts to Italy in 1853 and to
Asia Minor in 1856–57. Upon his return, he was invited by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti to participate in the
Oxford Union murals project, painting
Sir Gawaine and the Damsels. '' (1877), regarded as the artist's masterpiece On 10 January 1859, he married Elizabeth King, the daughter of John James King, granddaughter of the third
Earl of Egremont, and the widow of George Frederick Dawson. They settled in Hillhouse,
Cawthorne, and had one daughter, Mary, in 1860. That same year, Spencer-Stanhope's house
Sandroyd (now part of
Reed's School), near
Cobham in
Surrey, was commissioned from the architect
Philip Webb. Finished by 1861, Sandroyd was only Webb's second house, the first having been built for
William Morris. The house was designed to accommodate Stanhope's work as a painter, with two second-floor
studios connected by double doors, a waiting room, and a dressing room for
models. The fireplace featured figurative
tiles designed by Burne-Jones based on
Chaucer's dream-vision poem
The Legend of Good Women. For a person of Stanhope's social standing, the house was considered "a modest artist's dwelling". Burne-Jones was a frequent visitor to Sandroyd in the 1860s, and the landscape furnished the background for his painting
The Merciful Knight (1864), the design of which Stanhope's
I Have Trod the Winepress Alone is said to resemble. The move was intended to offer an improved environment for Stanhope's chronic
asthma. When his condition was not alleviated, he turned to wintering in Florence. In the summers, he at first stayed at Burne-Jones's house in London and later at the Elms, the western half of Little Campden House on
Campden Hill, the eastern half of which was occupied by
Augustus Egg. In 1867, at the age of seven, Mary died of
scarlet fever and was buried in at the
English Cemetery in Florence. Her father designed her headstone. Although his family accepted his occupation as a painter and took a great interest in art, his niece Evelyn's parents disparaged the achievements of "poor Roddy" and regarded the painters with whom he associated as "unconventional". Considered among the
avant-garde of the 1870s, Stanhope became a regular exhibitor at the
Grosvenor Gallery, the alternative to the
Royal Academy. Stanhope moved permanently to Florence in 1880. There he painted the
reredos of the English Church, and other work in the Chapel of Marlborough College. In 1873, he bought the Villa Nuti in Florence, where he was visited frequently by De Morgan and where he lived until his death. De Morgan's sister,
A.M.W. Stirling, wrote a collection of biographical essays called
A Painter of Dreams, including reminiscences of her uncle, "the Idealist, the seer of exquisite visions". During the 19th and early 20th century, the extended
Spencer-Stanhope family included several artists, whose ties were the theme of a 2007 exhibition,
Painters of Dreams, part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the opening of Cannon Hall to the public as a museum. Featured were paintings by Stanhope and Evelyn De Morgan, along with ceramics by her husband,
William De Morgan; bronzes by
Gertrude Spencer-Stanhope; and the ballroom at
Cannon Hall and "Fairyland" in the pleasure grounds, which were designed by Sir Walter and his daughter Cecily. ==Works==