The Postcard
A postally unused postcard that was published by the National Museum Wales.
The following is printed on the back of the card:
'Graham Sutherland (1903 - 1980)
Fountain, Small Version, 1965
Oil on Canvas.
Your purchase supports the work of
Pembrokeshire Coast National Park
Authority.'
Fountain, Small Version (1965)
This painting is oil on canvas and measures 64 x 53 cm.
The work is one of a series that Sutherland produced on the theme of fountains and running water in the mid 1960's. The fountain is typical of the region around Menton, but it is re-imagined amongst profuse foliage, and gains a mysterious atmosphere.
The black and green leaves set against deep blue create a strong, graphic pattern. This is reminiscent of both Sutherland’s designs for textiles and tapestries, and also of the work of Henri Matisse whom Sutherland greatly admired.
Graham Sutherland
Graham Vivian Sutherland was born in Streatham, South London on the 24th. August 1903. He 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.
Printmaking, mostly of romantic landscapes, dominated Sutherland's work during the 1920's. He developed his art by working in watercolours before switching to using oil paints in the 1940's.
A series of surreal oil paintings depicting the Pembrokeshire landscape secured his reputation as a leading British modern artist.
Graham served as an official war artist in the Second World War, painting industrial scenes on the British home front. After the war, Sutherland embraced figurative painting, beginning with his 1946 work, The Crucifixion.
Subsequent paintings combined religious symbolism with motifs from nature, such as thorns.
Such was Sutherland's standing in post-war Britain that he was commissioned to design the massive central tapestry for the new Coventry Cathedral, Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph.
-- Sir Winston Churchill and Other Portraits
A number of portrait commissions in the 1950's proved to be highly controversial. Winston Churchill hated Sutherland's depiction of him, and it was subsequently destroyed.
Beginning in 1949, alongside his abstract works, Sutherland painted a series of portraits of leading public figures, with those of Somerset Maugham and Lord Beaverbrook among the best known.
Beaverbrook regarded his portrait by Sutherland, which clearly depicted him as cunning and reptilian, as both an "outrage" and a "masterpiece".
Maugham initially greatly disliked his portrait, but came to admire it even though it had been described as making him look "like the madam of a brothel".
In 1954, Sutherland was commissioned to paint a full-length portrait of Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. Sutherland received 1,000 guineas for the painting, a sum funded by donations from members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Churchill had asked at the outset:
"How are you going to paint me?
As a cherub, or the Bulldog?"
Sutherland responded by saying:
"It entirely depends on
what you show me, sir'.
As Sutherland later told Lord Beaverbrook:
"Consistently… he showed
me the Bull Dog."
Sutherland's Portrait greatly upset Churchill, who initially refused to accept its presentation. Finding the depiction deeply unflattering, Churchill disliked the portrait intensely - he remarked that the portrait made him look half-witted.
The elderly Churchill had wanted to direct the composition towards a fictionalised scene, but Sutherland had insisted upon a realistic portrayal, one described by Simon Schama as:
"No bulldog, no baby face.
Just an obituary in paint".
The painting was presented to Churchill by both Houses of Parliament at a public ceremony in Westminster Hall on his 80th. birthday on the 30th. November 1954.
The best Churchill would say about the painting at the presentation was that it was:
"A remarkable example
of modern art".
After its public presentation, the painting was taken to Churchill's country home at Chartwell but not displayed.
For a long time it was assumed that it was destroyed by Lady Spencer-Churchill; however, in the course of research for a biography of Churchill, audio recordings emerged that attribute the destruction to Grace Hamblin, Churchill's private secretary.
According to this, the painting was taken by Grace and her brother to a secluded house and burned. Clementine Churchill learned of the deed the next morning and approved.
It was Sutherland's custom to prepare detailed, almost independent 'finished' works, close-up studies of the heads of his sitters. For Churchill there are many, as Sutherland grappled with the problems of describing one of the legendary hero-figures of the twentieth century.
Although the final painting was destroyed, some of Sutherland's studies for the portrait have survived. The painting on the postcard is one of them - the final full-length portrait that no longer exists showed Churchill sitting in a chair.
In all, Sutherland painted over fifty portraits, often of European aristocrats or senior businessmen. Following the Churchill portrait, Sutherland's portraits of, among others, Konrad Adenauer and the Queen Mother established him as something of an unofficial state portrait painter. This status was underlined by the award of the Order of Merit in 1960.
-- Graham Sutherland as an Art Teacher
During his career, Sutherland taught at a number of art colleges, notably at Chelsea School of Art and at Goldsmiths College, where he had been a student.
-- The Move to the South of France
In 1955, Sutherland and his wife purchased a property near Nice. Living abroad led to something of a decline in his status in Britain.
However, a visit to Pembrokeshire in 1967, his first trip there in nearly twenty years, led to a creative renewal that went some way toward restoring his reputation as a leading British artist.
-- The Death of Graham Sutherland
Graham Sutherland died at the age of 76 on the 17th. February 1980. He was laid to rest in the churchyard of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Trottiscliffe, Kent.
