George Spendlove (1897 - 1962)

George Spendlove was born in Montreal, Canada, on 23 April 1897. Educated privately by tutors, he showed particular interest in art history and acquired tastes which were to influence his career. At the age of 19, he enlisted for the war and served in Europe, suffering a severe concussion which injured the nerves in his ears, leaving him with a deafness that was to plague him all his life. In 1919, he returned to Montreal but was unable to work for two years. It was during the latter part of this period that he became interested in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh by reading a book on comparative religion.

He attended meetings at the Maxwell home regularly and became a devoted friend of the family, eventually accepting the Bahá’í Faith, which caused his heart to be healed after the terrible experiences of the war. Many who knew Mr. Spendlove recall him saying that when he first began studying the Bahá’í Faith he got himself a large notebook in which to jot down, like a good scientific researcher, any question he felt could not be answered satisfactorily by the Faith. Thirty years later, he revisited this book and noted that there was not a single unanswered question left.

George Spendlove became a vital supporter of the Green Acre Bahá’í Summer School in Eliot, Maine. It was during one of his summer vacations there, when he was teaching at the school, that he met Dorothy G. Spurr of Sparkill, New York. They were married in 1929. Their son, David, was born in 1933 and their daughter, Dorothy Grace, in 1936.

After working as a dealer in fine arts for several years, he sold his business and spent a year travelling in Palestine, India, and the Far East. It was between 1932 and 1933 that Mr. Spendlove made his first of two pilgrimages to Haifa. The year following his trip, he went to London to study Chinese archaeology at the Courtauld Institute of the University of London. On completion of this course, he was given a post-graduate diploma in archaeology and was recommended to assist the Royal Academy in preparing its catalogue of the great "International Exhibition of Chinese Art," shown at Burlington House in 1935. Mr. Spendlove had prepared himself for work in Chinese art by teaching himself to read the language script. While in the United Kingdom, he played a large part in establishing its Bahá’í National Spiritual Assembly on a firm foundation.

In November 1936, George Spendlove returned to Canada to join the staff of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, overseeing the Japanese and East Indian collections. After several years, he became the curator of the modern European collections and was appointed special lecturer in the Department of Art and Archaeology at the University of Toronto. Whether the subject was Chinese art (his first love), European furniture, Indian art, Japanese ceramics and lacquer, timepieces, glass, silver, or (later) Canadiana, it was all in his head. His lectures were never dry but full of his witty humour and precise information. He had a phenomenal memory and his impact on the people he met was great.

In 1952 came his final appointment at the Royal Ontario Museum as curator of the Canadiana collection. George Spendlove’s first book, The Face of Early Canada, published in 1958, is illustrated with examples from this collection. A second book, Collectors’ Luck, followed in 1960. During all these years of intense application of his chosen profession, to which his many professional honours testify, he lectured at Green Acre nearly every year and had a Tuesday night Bahá’í fireside in Toronto for over 20 years. His firesides literally sparked the Toronto community to activity and growth.

In 1962, while looking forward to his approaching retirement and subsequent travel in the Far East, George Spendlove passed away peacefully in his sleep in Toronto. Mr. Spendlove combined in his life and work the deeply spiritual and the brilliantly intellectual and was distinguished and much beloved not only among the Bahá’ís but among his professional colleagues as well.

* Adapted from Bahá’í World, Vol. 13, 1954-1963, “In Memoriam,” pp. 895-9.