Graham Sutherland painted bleak worlds in an expressionist-surrealist style, offended a prime minister as a portrait painter, became a multiple Documenta participant, and found entry into the great galleries of England, France and Germany.
(...) Continue readingGraham Sutherland – First railway, then art express: From engineer to painter
Graham Sutherland was born in the London suburb of Streatham on 24 August 1903. The son of a lawyer, he attended prep school in Sutton followed by Epsom College in Surrey, leaving in 1919. Graham Sutherland initially chose a career far from art, taking an apprenticeship as an engineer at Midland Railway in Derby. He had already developed a great interest in art during his schooling, however, and the ever-growing wish to become an artist finally led to a course at Goldsmiths College. His main focus there were the various print techniques to which he himself soon brought such great mastery that he was elevated from student to teacher. In 1926, Sutherland converted to Catholicism, and one year later he married Kathleen Barry and moved as teacher to the Chelsea School of Art. Although he had already made a name for himself as a graphic artist, it was only from the mid-1930s that he began his actual artistic activity.
Surrealist horrors of war; friendship with Francis Bacon
At the beginning of his artistic career, Graham Sutherland was mainly influenced by the works of the modern painter Paul Nash. His preferred motif was the landscape, in particular the bleak wasteland of moors and stone fields of Cornwall and Pembrokeshire. He used the natural formation of the pictured landscape often as a starting point, for he did not produce realistic depictions, but abstracted them – sometimes to the edge of Surrealism. As a result, he took part in the International Surrealism Exhibition in 1936 in his hometown of London. The British art critic Kenneth Clark recommended Graham Sutherland as official war painter for the Second World War, and it was during that time that he produced many works of dark colours showing the unreal horror worlds of death and destruction. Sutherland was close friends with Francis Bacon; the painters exhibited occasionally together and in the 1950s, Sutherland’s style demonstrated a clear influence from Bacon. Ultimately, it was Sutherland who introduced Bacon to the gallery owner Erica Brausen, who ensured his breakthrough with her famous Hanover Gallery.
Formative sojourn in Southern France; extensive work as a portrait painter
Graham Sutherland had his first retrospective as early as 1941, which he shared with his colleagues Henry Moore and John Piper. In 1944, the vicar and great patron of religious art, Walter Hussey, ordered a Crucifixion painting, which became Sutherland’s first major work on a religious theme. His first exhibition in New York in 1946 was an important milestone for Sutherland, which was followed by a formative stay of several years in the south of France, during which he met Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. At the end of the 1950s, he dedicated himself increasingly to portrait painting, whereby the famous picture of Winston Churchill is particularly worth mentioning. It was received far more favourably by the art critics than by the sitter himself: the prime minister found it made him look feeble-minded, and his wife expressly approved of its destruction by the private secretary. This was an act of vandalism in the eyes of the horrified artist. Only the preparatory works and a copy of the painting have survived.
Graham Sutherland died in London on 17 February 1980.
Graham Sutherland - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
