Composition 1975
Pen, ink and gouache on paper.
584 x 406 mm.
(23 x 16 inches).
London 1903 ~ 1980 London
In 1967 Graham Sutherland went back to Pembrokeshire for the first time in over twenty years. From then on he returned every year and his late work shows a revival of the inspiration he had found in the gnarled trees and twisted roots around the estuary of Eastern Cleddau near Picton Castle. As in his earlier studies he translated these natural objects into anthropomorphic form but now his technique is even more abstract, more eccentric. His late compositions usually reveal a greater concern with symmetry and a very formal control of the subject. He still concentrates on the thrusting, standing, forms of thorn bushes, but now insects and animals have also become an important ingredient of his style.
In the last two decades of his life, although Sutherland continued to paint a great deal, he turned more decisively to printmaking. In 1968 he produced his Bestiary, a series of twenty-six lithographs and then the Bees (1977) and a second Bestiary (1979) comprising aquatints based on the poems of Apollinaire. The sheets of 'correspondences' which also form part of the Bestiary not only show Sutherland's distinctive desire to transform rocks into images suggestive of the human head but also to construct totemic figures out of mechanical and organic shapes.1
Our drawing may have been preparatory for a late lithograph. The red, yellow and black colour combination, the subject, and the form are comparable to a number of these late prints.2 However, it also corresponds in style to late watercolours, such as Thorn Tree in Red (1970).3 In both works, the thorn tree has been metamorphosed into a tall, thin totem pole structure with v-shaped roots, like a stand, balanced on a ledge above the lower edge of the picture plane. The knobs and flower designs, of our sheet, are typical of many of his compositions. However, the trump-like flare at the top of the totem pole is less usual and seems to indicate that the original inspiration was a tall vase. Vases appear elsewhere in his oeuvre. Our sheet has a completely formalized circle of birds revolving round the centre of the stem. Sutherland was frequently inspired by the birds swooping over the water in the estuary.4
1. John Hayes, The Art of Graham Sutherland, Oxford, 1980, p.159.
2. Cf. Roberto Tassi, Graham Sutherland, Complete Graphis Work, Thames and Hudson, 1978, Pl. 130.
3. Francesco Arcangeli, Graham Sutherland, Milan, 1975, Pl. 192.
4. F. Arcangeli, op.cit., Pl. 183 showing the same type of bird with a long neck.
