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British painter, printmaker, and designer. He abandoned an apprenticeship as a railway engineer to study engraving and etching, 1921–6, and up to 1930 worked exclusively as a printmaker. His etchings of this period are in the Romantic and visionary tradition of Samuel Palmer.
Graham Vivian Sutherland (24 August 1903 – 17 February 1980) was a prolific English artist. Notable for his paintings of abstract landscapes and for his portraits of public figures, Sutherland also worked in other media, including printmaking, tapestry and glass design.
- 30 November 1954
- How Did We Get Here?
- Sitting For Sutherland
- “Mortal Affront”
- “Something I Never Expected to See”
- The Fate of The Sutherland
- Culpability?
- The Author
- Endnotes and Further Reading
The scene is familiar to students of Churchill’s life. It is his eightieth birthday. In London, both Houses of Parliament have assembled in Westminster Hall to celebrate the occasion. They present him with the gift of a portrait, paid for by parliamentary subscription. They intend it to remain with him for his lifetime, and then to hang in the Pala...
In June 1954 the cumbersomely named “Churchill Joint Houses of Parliament Gift Committee” decided on the presentation of a portrait and who should receive the commission. Their first choice of Sir Herbert Gunn was rejected because he was too expensive. Gunn’s portrait of King George VIsuggests a work by him would have been more conventional, and fl...
Things started off hopefully enough. On 1 September Clementine Churchill wrote her daughter Mary: “Mr. Graham Sutherland is a ‘Wow’… [One] can hardly believe that the savage cruel designs which he exhibits come from his brush. Papa has given him three sittings & no one has seen the beginnings of the portrait except Papa & he is much struck by the p...
Churchill’s doctor Lord Moran worried that Sutherland would give up and “paint the legend.” Sir Winston, Moran said, “is always acting. Try to see him when he has got the greasepaint off his face.”3Sutherland felt he had solved the problem after he was able to observe and sketch Churchill playing a combative game of bezique, his guard temporarily d...
Sutherland had an explanation. In 1961 he would tell Lord Beaverbrook: “For better or worse, I am the kind of painter who is governed entirely by what he sees. I am at the mercy of my sitter. What he feels, or shows at the time, I try to record.”7 And 1954 was a bad time to have Churchill as a sitter. Four years later David McFall, working on Sir W...
The public never saw the portrait again. That is not to say that there was no demand for it. On 4 May 1960 the bursar of Churchill College wrote asking for various items they might display, including the Sutherland. There came a prompt and chilly response from Anthony Montague Browne, Churchill’s private secretary. “The suggestion about Graham Suth...
It is unrealistic to hold Sutherland culpable for Churchill’s disappointment. He delivered his commission. A painter, not a photographer, he worked within his brief and certainly within his style. Everyone knew Sutherland’s work at the time. It should have been clear, especially given his 1951 portrayal of Lord Beaverbrook, that he was no purveyor ...
Mr. Turrell has recently retired from a lifetime career in Information Technology. A longtime Churchill bibliophile and collector, he was formerly associate editor of Finest Hour.
1 Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill, His Complete Speeches, 1897-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974), VIII, 8608. 2 Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill: The Biography of a Marriage (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970, 587. 3 Roger Berthoud, Graham Sutherland: A Biography (London: Faber & Faber, 1982), 189. 4 Jonathan Black, Winston Church...
Graham Vivian Sutherland OM (24 August 1903 – 17 February 1980) was a prolific English artist. Notable for his paintings of abstract landscapes and for his portraits of public figures, Sutherland also worked in other media, including printmaking, tapestry and glass design.
May 17, 2018 · Sutherland studied art at Goldsmiths College, London, after abandoning a railway engineering apprenticeship. His early work, influenced by Samuel Palmer, was in etching and engraving, before he moved into ceramics and painting.
Graham Sutherland was celebrated as the 'outstanding painter of his generation'. The places in which Sutherland worked had a profound influence on his work: from the rural landscape of Kent, to the hills and valleys of west Wales and the heat and light of the French Riviera.
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Nov 22, 2017 · The first portrait Sutherland was ever commissioned to paint was that of Somerset Maugham – a novelist and playwright who was perhaps most known for his novel, Of Human Bondage. The portrait is a distinct one, cementing Sutherland’s place in artistic circles. Graham Sutherland, Somerset Maugham, 1951, Oil on Canvas, 1372x635mm, Tate
