At a post-WWII dinner at the Tate Gallery, the then Director John Rothenstein, who admired Stanley's work, hung The Cookham Resurrection opposite the guest of honour, Sir Winston Churchill. During the proceedings Rothenstein asked Churchill what he thought of it. Churchill, who on an earlier occasion had expressed antipathy towards Stanley's 1922 Unveiling Cookham War Memorial, glared at it for a few minutes, and then growled if that is the Resurrection, then let me have Eternal Sleep.

Even today, opinion can divide : Those horrible cartoonish figures, and that cranky, smug, cloying, over-cooked Cookham Goddiness of it all. The worst thing to come out of the Thames Valley, with the exception of Swan-Upping. (Adrian Searle, 2006, art critic of The Guardian, who placed the painting as sixth in a collection of the Thirty Worst Paintings.)