It was these oil paintings, of surreal, organic landscapes of the Pembrokeshire coast, that secured his reputation as a leading British modern artist. Oil paintings of the Pembrokeshire landscape dominated his first one-man exhibition of paintings, held in September 1938 at the Rosenberg and Helft Gallery in London. As the 1930s progressed and the political situation in Europe grew worse, he began to depict ominous, distorted human forms emerging from the land. Sutherland focused on the inherent strangeness of natural forms, abstracting them to sometimes give his work a surrealist appearance and in 1936 he exhibited at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London. ![]() The region remained a source for his paintings for much of the following decade and he visited the area each year until the start of the Second World War. In 1934, Sutherland visited Pembrokeshire in Wales for the first time and was profoundly inspired by its landscape. His early paintings were mainly landscapes and show an affinity with the work of Paul Nash. Griggs.ġ930s Slag-ladles (1943) (Art.IWM ART LD 1773)įollowing the collapse of the print market in the early 1930s, due to the Great Depression, Sutherland began to concentrate on painting. His early prints of pastoral subjects show the influence of Samuel Palmer, largely mediated by the older etcher, F.L. While still a student, Sutherland established a reputation as a fine printmaker and commercial printmaking would be his main source of income throughout the late 1920s. In both 19, Sutherland exhibited drawings and engravings at the XXI Gallery in London. There being no vacancies at his first choice, the Slade School of Fine Art, he entered Goldsmiths' School of Art in 1921, specialising in engraving and etching before graduating in 1926. ![]() After a year, Sutherland succeeded in persuading his father that he was not destined for a career in engineering and that he should be allowed to study art. Upon leaving school, after some preliminary coaching in art, Sutherland began an engineering apprenticeship at the Midland Railway locomotive works in Derby where several members of the extended Sutherland family had previously worked. Graham Sutherland attended Homefield Preparatory School in Sutton and was then educated at Epsom College in Surrey until 1919. Both were amateur painters and musicians. Graham Sutherland was born in Streatham, London, the eldest of three children of George Humphrey Vivian Sutherland (1873–1952), a barrister who later became a civil servant in the Land Registry and the Board of Education, and his wife Elsie (1877–1957), née Foster. However, a visit to Pembrokeshire in 1967, his first trip there in nearly twenty years, led to a creative renewal that went some way toward restoring his reputation as a leading British artist. Living abroad led to something of a decline in his status in Britain. In 1955, Sutherland and his wife purchased a property near Nice. Winston Churchill hated Sutherland's depiction of him and subsequently Lady Spencer-Churchill had the painting destroyed.ĭuring his career, Sutherland taught at a number of art colleges, notably at Chelsea School of Art and at Goldsmiths College, where he had been a student. A number of portrait commissions in the 1950s proved highly controversial. Such was Sutherland's standing in post-war Britain that he was commissioned to design the massive central tapestry for the new Coventry Cathedral, Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph. Subsequent paintings combined religious symbolism with motifs from nature, such as thorns. After the war, Sutherland embraced figurative painting, beginning with his 1946 work, The Crucifixion. ![]() He served as an official war artist in the Second World War, painting industrial scenes on the British home front. A series of surreal oil painting depicting the Pembrokeshire landscape secured his reputation as a leading British modern artist. He developed his art by working in watercolours before switching to using oil paints in the 1940s. ![]() Printmaking, mostly of romantic landscapes, dominated Sutherland's work during the 1920s. Notable for his paintings of abstract landscapes and for his portraits of public figures, Sutherland also worked in other media, including printmaking, tapestry and glass design. Graham Vivian Sutherland OM (24 August 1903 – 17 February 1980) was a prolific English artist. Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph (tapestry at Coventry Cathedral)
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