26 Facts About Graham Sutherland

Graham Vivian Sutherland was a prolific English artist.

Notable for his paintings of abstract landscapes and for his portraits of public figures, Sutherland worked in other media, including printmaking, tapestry and glass design.

Graham Sutherland developed his art by working in watercolours before switching to using oil paints in the 1940s.

Graham Sutherland served as an official war artist in the Second World War, painting industrial scenes on the British home front.

Such was Graham 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.

Graham Sutherland was born in Streatham, London, the eldest of three children of George Humphrey Vivian Sutherland, a barrister who later became a civil servant in the Land Registry and the Board of Education, and his wife Elsie, nee Foster.

Graham Sutherland attended Homefield Preparatory School in Sutton and was then educated at Epsom College in Surrey until 1919.

In both 1925 and 1928, Graham Sutherland exhibited drawings and engravings at the XXI Gallery in London.

In 1934, Graham Sutherland visited Pembrokeshire in Wales for the first time and was profoundly inspired by its landscape.

Graham Sutherland focused on the inherent strangeness of natural forms, abstracting them to sometimes give his work a surrealist appearance and in 1936 he exhibited at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London.

Alongside oil painting, Graham Sutherland took up glass design, fabric design, and poster design during the 1930s, and taught engraving at the Chelsea School of Art from 1926.

Graham Sutherland converted to Catholicism in December 1926, the year before his marriage to Kathleen Barry, who had been his fellow student at Goldsmiths College.

At the start of World War Two, the Chelsea School of Art closed for the duration of the conflict and Graham Sutherland moved to rural Gloucestershire.

Between 1940 and 1945, Graham Sutherland was employed as a full-time, salaried artist by the War Artists' Advisory Committee.

Graham Sutherland recorded bomb damage in rural and urban Wales towards the end of 1940, then bomb damage caused by the Blitz in the City and East End of London.

Graham Sutherland returned to Wales in September 1941 to work on a series of paintings of blast furnaces.

Graham Sutherland spent four months from the end of March 1944 at the Royal Ordnance Factory at Woolwich Arsenal working on a series of five paintings for WAAC.

In 1944, Graham Sutherland was commissioned by Walter Hussey, the Vicar of St Matthew's Church, Northampton, and an important patron of modern religious art, to paint The Crucifixion.

In 1946, Graham Sutherland had his first exhibition in New York.

In 1951, Graham Sutherland was commissioned to produce a large work for the Festival of Britain.

Graham Sutherland exhibited in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1952 along with Edward Wadsworth and the New Aspects of British Sculpture Group.

From 1948 until 1954, Graham Sutherland served as a trustee of the Tate gallery.

In early 1954, Graham Sutherland was commissioned to design a monumental tapestry for the new Coventry Cathedral.

From his portrait work, Graham Sutherland acquired several patrons in Italy and took to spending the summer in Venice.

However, in 1967, for an Italian television documentary, Graham Sutherland visited Pembrokeshire for the first time in more than twenty years and became inspired by the landscape to regularly work in the region until his death.

Graham Sutherland died in 1980 and was buried in the graveyard of the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Trottiscliffe, Kent.