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| Graham Sutherland - Printmaker |
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by Rigby Graham
(11 Apr 2003) |
Throughout his life Sutherland’s work attracted controversy, one has only to think of the portraits of Adenauer, Beaverbrook, Churchill, Somerset Maugham, Nelson and the Queen Mother. Then there was the Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph that great tapestry for the ‘east’ end of Spence’s new Coventry cathedral. On a much smaller and more domestic scale are Sutherland’s designs for Coalport and for Foley bone china, his ovenware for A.J. Wilkinsons, his glass designs for Stuart crystal, and for Steuben glass. Then there were his designs for carpets, furnishing fabrics and wallpapers. There was his whole graphic output, book and magazine illustrations, Christmas card designs, London Transport posters, and lorry bills, all of which attracted critical comment as did his many one man exhibitions, the Tate Retrospectives of 1953 and 1982, his work as an official war artist and his lifelong production of printmaking the imaginative work with which we are concerned here.
Sutherland started as an engraver working in drypoint and in etching, influenced early on by the example of Whistler and Meryon, and later that of Rembrandt and Palmer. He enjoyed early success which ended with the Wall Street crash. He then turned to painting, and about 1935 to lithography and again to etching and aquatint the next year. So the output continued and with particular highpoints e.g. the lithographic suite entitled A Bestiary and some correspondences 1965-68. In 1976 Eleonora and Valter Rossi suggested to Sutherland that he might care to try colour aquatints and he became fascinated as he began to uncover the possibilities within that process with their help and guidance in Menton. The result was the Bees sequence, five of which are included here, as are examples of the series Le Bestiare, ou Cortège d’Orphée, images based loosely upon texts of Guillaume Apollinaire. These colour aquatints of Sutherland’s visionary bestiary stimulated by the quatraines (mainly) of Apollinaire make for interesting comparisons with his aquatints from the Bees of a year or two before.
All Sutherland’s printmaking imagery is arresting, much of it is challenging. It is sometimes set slightly off-balance, held at tension, precarious, unsettling and frequently ambiguous. As in all his printmaking Sutherland’s understanding of what a process can offer and his grasp of the different techniques involved in etching, aquatint and in lithography shown in his autographic prints here in Uppingham have contributed greatly to the quality and flavour of each final image. Much of this work is deeply reflective, precise, particular, quietly insistent, melancholic and profound. It will repay prolonged acquaintance and careful study.
Rigby Graham
Painter, printmaker and writer
1. Felix H. Man Graham Sutherland - Das Graphische Werk 1922-1970 Verlag Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, Munich 1970
2. Roberto Tassi Graham Sutherland, Complete Graphic Work Thames and Hudson London 1978 |
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