G R A H A M  S U T H E R L A N D  O.M.

British, 1903-1980

Tourette, 1947

Pencil, chalk, watercolor and gouache on paper

23 x 28.2 cm

Signed and dated 'Sutherland 1947' (upper right) and titled on the reverse

PROVENANCE:

Marlborough Fine Arts Ltd., London;

Private Collection, California

In the years following the war, Sutherland returned to making anthropomorphized studies from nature, heavily influenced by the emotional content of his war experiences and by the formal vocabulary of continental Surrealism.

Sutherland made his first visit to the South of France in 1947, staying on the Riviera for five weeks in the spring, regularly painting and gambling with Francis Bacon. From then on Sutherland spent part of each year there, buying a house at Menton in 1955. The South of France and the Mediterranean presented a different world to Sutherland and had a huge impact on his work. The landscape and vegetation, together with the bright Mediterranean sun, changed Sutherland’s palette to one of brilliant colour – pinks, yellows and blues. The palm palisades and vine pergolas replaced the spiky thorn heads earlier in the decade.

This study is part of a series of studies he made for a 1947 painting. They were initially inspired by a group of rocks he found in a dry river bed at Tourette-sur-Loup. Very little of the natural landscape remains in these highly charged amalgams of animal, vegetable and mineral forms.

SOLD