Frances Spalding

Frances Spalding ( Crabtree; born 16 July 1950) 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 (1978–1988) before becoming a freelance writer and curator. 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.

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. 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."

Spalding was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984. 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.

In 1974, Crabtree married Julian Spalding; the couple divorced in 1991. Roger Fry: Art and Life (1980)

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, )

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