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Green Tree Form: Interior of Wood, 1940

Green Tree Form: Interior of Wood, 1940
Oil on canvas
30 x 41 1/8 inches

 

Thorn Head, 1947

Thorn Head, 1947
Oil on canvas
16 1/8 x 16 1/8 inches
Pallant House Gallery,
Chichester, England

 

Cray Fields, 1925

Cray Fields, 1925
Etching
4 3/4 x 5 inches

 

Red Monolith , 1938

Red Monolith , 1938
Oil on canvas
39 1/4 x 24 1/4 inches

 

Entrance to a Lane, 1939

Entrance to a Lane, 1939
Oil on canvas
19 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches

All images © Estate of Graham Sutherland

David Ebony

NATURAL FORTITUDE:
GRAHAM SUTHERLAND IN BRITAIN

 

Today, with global warming and other environmental changes heading most people’s must-deal-with list, the work of Graham Sutherland (1903–1980) has an ever more profound significance. Especially pertinent to the trials and tribulations of virtually all 21st-century life forms, not to mention universal angst over fragile Earth’s apparent malaise,

          Sutherland’s special view of nature rewards close and frequent examination. Most critics regard as his purest expression of nature’s relentless struggle the brooding images of rugged landscapes and gnarled organic forms that he produced in England and Wales prior to the early 1950s. By 1955, the sirens of fame and fortune had summoned the London-born painter to reside permanently in the balmy environs of the Côte d’Azur. Sutherland’s richly impastoed, brilliantly colored paintings and works on paper of the 1930s and ’40s are visual metaphors for survival. They contain fierce renderings of forms found in nature that have successfully battled the elements, though just barely. These pictures of contorted roots, thorn trees and ravaged coastlines are quite unlike anything produced in Britain at the time. Similar in impact to Henry Moore’s contribution to sculpture, Sutherland’s achievement in painting was unrivaled in Britain during this period. Canvases such as Green Tree Form: Interior of Wood (1940), Horned Forms (1944), and Thorn Head (1947), recall comments by the eminent English critic Herbert Read, who said of Sutherland’s work of the period, “. . . the growing fearsomeness of the symbols reflects the now prevailing cosmic anxiety.”1

          Sutherland had an early ambition to become an engineer but was thwarted by inadequate math skills. He studied at Goldsmiths and was inspired by Blake and Turner, and especially by the visionary works of Samuel Palmer. At Goldsmiths he met Kathleen Barry, a fashion designer who he married in 1927, and remained with for the rest of his life. Tragedy struck the couple early on in their marriage when their only child, a son, died a few days after birth. In the following year, they spent considerable time exploring Kent, the verdant countryside southeast of London that Palmer had transformed in his work to a mystical and magical realm. Eventually the Sutherlands bought a house there.

          Graham began his career as an etcher and achieved considerable success with small, densely packed compositions with nostalgic and quasi-mystical overtones, such as Cray Fields (1925) and Pastoral (1930), borrowing heavily from Samuel Palmer’s work. In Cray Fields, the exaggerated rays of light streaming though the trees allude no doubt to a rapturous morning exaltation. Similarly moving, Pastoral shows plant and tree forms inhabiting a bucolic setting, yet they appear wildly exaggerated and transformed into towering and menacing creatures.

          After the once-lucrative print market collapsed during the Great Depression in the early 1930s, Sutherland assumed a teaching post at the Chelsea School of Art and also took on design work including posters, textiles, china and glassware. Inspired by a chance 1934 visit to Wales, he began to work in oils. The young painter was transfixed by the extraordinary landscape of the Welsh coastline, where high winds and harsh terrain allow only the hardiest of life forms to survive. Here began his lifelong study of metamorphosis and his fascination with organic forms whose mangled shapes reflect the struggle of every living thing to withstand the violent forces of nature. Of Wales, Sutherland said, “It was in this country that I began to learn painting … I felt I could express what I felt only by paraphrasing what I saw. Moreover, such country did not seem to make man appear little as does some country of the grander sort. I felt just as much a part of the earth as my features were part of me. I did not feel that my imagination was in conflict with the real, but that reality was a dispersed and disintegrated form of the imagination.”2

          During his early Welsh period, he produced numerous works on paper, including Landscape Study at Cairns (1937) and Tree Form in Estuary (1945), whose overwrought surfaces of harsh but eloquent lines, and acidic yet engaging tones in gouache further convey a strong feeling of anguish and struggle. Here also is more than a hint of redemption.

          One of Sutherland’s key early works, Red Monolith (1938) corresponds to the experiments of Unit One, a loose affiliation of artists with whom Sutherland often exhibited, including Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Paul Nash and Victor Pasmore. Sutherland’s spare abstraction, based on a rock formation, demonstrates the artist’s interest in ambiguous spatial relationships, which preoccupied him throughout his career. Here, a totemic stone rendered in orange-pink features a dark cavity at the top and tapers to two points at the bottom. Set against a simple background of dark blue and ocher, the composition suggests both microcosm and macrocosm. The richly textured geometric shapes and reductive ground recall certain works by Nicholson, while the fractured landscape elements hint at Nash.

1. Herbert Read: A British Vision of World Art, Benedict Read and David Thistlewood eds., London, Lund Humphries, 1993, p. 88.
2. Graham Sutherland, “Welsh Sketch Book” in Graham Sutherland: Landscapes, War Scenes, Portraits 1924-1950, by Martin Hammer, London, Scala, 2005, p. 70.

DAVID EBONY is currently Managing Editor of Art in America magazine. He is also Contributing Editor and writer for Lacanian Ink. Among his books are Emily Mason (Braziller, 2006); Botero: Abu Ghraib (Prestel, 2006); Craigie Horsfield: Relation (Jeu de Paume, 2006); and Carlo Maria Mariani (2002). He lives and works in New York City.

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