“Graham Sutherland was quite an uneven artist but this is clearly one of the handful of his works that are truly outstanding. It was completed in a period, from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s, when he was on fire in terms of inspiration and imagination.
Like a lot of his work at the time, this picture was inspired by a particular place in the Pembrokeshire countryside. It’s a wonderful image and I like the fact that, at first glance, it appears to be a beautifully composed abstract collection of shapes.
There are some of his typical splashes of quite intense colour and others that are more muted alongside patches of powerful details like the dark sprigs of foliage that imply overhanging branches.
This is a perfect example of what Sutherland used to call his ‘paraphrased landscapes’, reinterpretations which resulted from walks around the countryside during which he would open his mind to all possibilities rather than simply focus on a ‘view’ or a scene to inspire a picture.
He’d notice something from a fleeting glance of something like tree roots or stones, capture it in a rough sketch before going back to his studio to build up a final work. His personal vision of the landscape was very much filtered through that process.
Sutherland was very keen to downplay any links between works like this one and what was happening in the world at the time but I don’t think you can fail to look at pictures like this without sensing some sort of menace to them.
There is an anthropomorphic feel of aggression in those sinister shapes, some of which look very militaristic and aggressive. I don’t think that it is a coincidence.
Later he began painting in very different ways and he spent a lot of time in the south of France.
His postwar years were particularly marked by the enormous tapestry – Christ in Glory – he designed for the new Coventry Cathedral, a work which took up a whole decade of his life.
And he also began producing portraiture including that famous commissioned, full-length picture of Winston Churchill that caused something of a furore.
Overall I hope this exhibition will show that, in many ways, Sutherland was carrying on the British tradition of landscape painting while also nudging it in a new direction and making it very modern.
His work of the period nods to the likes of Samuel Palmer, Blake, Constable and Turner and I’d put him in the same lineage as one of the greatest landscape painters we have produced.”
Exultant Strangeness: Graham Sutherland Landscapes runs until 15 September
Nick Rogers is a curator at the Lakeland Arts Trust
Like a lot of his work at the time, this picture was inspired by a particular place in the Pembrokeshire countryside. It’s a wonderful image and I like the fact that, at first glance, it appears to be a beautifully composed abstract collection of shapes.
There are some of his typical splashes of quite intense colour and others that are more muted alongside patches of powerful details like the dark sprigs of foliage that imply overhanging branches.
This is a perfect example of what Sutherland used to call his ‘paraphrased landscapes’, reinterpretations which resulted from walks around the countryside during which he would open his mind to all possibilities rather than simply focus on a ‘view’ or a scene to inspire a picture.
He’d notice something from a fleeting glance of something like tree roots or stones, capture it in a rough sketch before going back to his studio to build up a final work. His personal vision of the landscape was very much filtered through that process.
Sutherland was very keen to downplay any links between works like this one and what was happening in the world at the time but I don’t think you can fail to look at pictures like this without sensing some sort of menace to them.
There is an anthropomorphic feel of aggression in those sinister shapes, some of which look very militaristic and aggressive. I don’t think that it is a coincidence.
Later he began painting in very different ways and he spent a lot of time in the south of France.
His postwar years were particularly marked by the enormous tapestry – Christ in Glory – he designed for the new Coventry Cathedral, a work which took up a whole decade of his life.
And he also began producing portraiture including that famous commissioned, full-length picture of Winston Churchill that caused something of a furore.
Overall I hope this exhibition will show that, in many ways, Sutherland was carrying on the British tradition of landscape painting while also nudging it in a new direction and making it very modern.
His work of the period nods to the likes of Samuel Palmer, Blake, Constable and Turner and I’d put him in the same lineage as one of the greatest landscape painters we have produced.”
Exultant Strangeness: Graham Sutherland Landscapes runs until 15 September
Nick Rogers is a curator at the Lakeland Arts Trust
