When the second world war broke out, the War Artists Advisory Committee commissioned Spencer to capture scenes of shipbuilding in Port Glasgow. This canvas of men heaving a red-hot steel from a blast furnace was the last in the “Shipbuilding” series, completed from a sketch made six years earlier. Spencer had a happy time in Glasgow, seeing spirituality in the workers’ ritualistic routines and building up a rapport with them. He recalled one encounter with a man named Joe Buchanan: “Sometimes when I had let fly to a considerable extent on my ‘peculiar’ views, you know the sort of thing – ‘I’m married to everybody really in varying degrees, marriage of the conventional kind is only one kind of marriage’ etc. etc. – Joe’s boxing champion face looked up from poking the fire & in quiet voice said, ‘Yee’l go oot of your nut’.” (https://www.1843magazine.com/culture/the-daily/the-passion-of-stanley-spencer)