Graham Sutherland

GRAHAM SUTHERLAND OM 1903 – London - 1980 Born into a middle-class family in London 1903, Graham Sutherland was an accomplished painter, printmaker and portraitist. Although Sutherland originally prepared for a career in engineering, studying at Epsom College, Sutton, after a short period as a trainee engineer at Midland Railway, he studied at Goldsmith College of Art, specializing in etching. His first one-man exhibition was in 1925 and he was elected to the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in the same year. As a response to the diminishing demand for prints, Sutherland began to paint with oil and watercolours c.1930 and continued to experiment with the medium in the form of romantic landscapes following a trip to Pembrokeshire in 1934. Sutherland was drawn to Pembrokeshire’s combination of marine and landscape environment, rich in historical overtones, and returned there every year until WWII. Sutherland consistently found its landscape an inspiration for his anthropomorphic natural forms. From 1940-45 Sutherland worked as an official war artist, drawing and painting armaments factories, blast furnaces and recording the devastation of shattered masonry and twisted iron inflicted on London during the blitz. He also painted mining and quarrying scenes in Wales and Cornwall. The work of Graham Sutherland is represented at the Arts Council of Great Britain; Ulster Museum, Belfast; Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery; British Museum; Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Glasgow Art Gallery & Museum; Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Imperial War Museum; Marlborough Fine Art, London; National Portrait Gallery, London; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Tate Gallery, London; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.