John Roddam Spencer Stanhope[1] (20 January 1829 – 2 August 1908) was an English artist associated with Edward Burne-Jones and George Frederic Watts and often regarded as a second-wave pre-Raphaelite.

He was the uncle and teacher of the painter Evelyn De Morgan and encouraged then unknown local artist Abel Hold to exhibit at the Royal Academy, which he did 16 times.

Upon his return, he was invited by Dante Gabriel Rossetti to participate in the Oxford Union murals project, painting Sir Gawaine and the Damsels.

[12] The fireplace featured figurative tiles designed by Burne-Jones based on Chaucer's dream-vision poem The Legend of Good Women.

[14] 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.

Stirling, wrote a collection of biographical essays called A Painter of Dreams, including reminiscences of her uncle, "the Idealist, the seer of exquisite visions".

[24] 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.