Sutherland in his atelier, Menton, 1960's

Graham Sutherland (1903-1980)

Born in Streatham, educated at Epsom College, Sutherland studied engineering before taking up as an art student at Goldsmiths.

His early work was mostly small etchings of pastoral subjects in the tradition of Samuel Palmer. In the 1930's his work took on a slight atmosphere of menace with the approach of war and with an increasing interest in natural form. In the mid 1930's he visited Pembrokeshire, whose landscape was to become a lifelong inspiration.
An official war artist, he produced a range of outstanding work of bomb damage, Cornish tin mining and industrial themes.

He increasingly spent time in the French Riviera from the late 1940's, and using a new palette, he moved towards more abstract explorations of the natural world, landscape and organic growth.
He was a celebrated portrait artist- most famously, perhaps, of Somerset Maugham and Churchill.

In the 1950's he was amongst the best known, and best paid, of British artists.