Sutherland, Graham
Sutherland, Graham (1903–80). Painter. Sutherland studied art at Goldsmiths College, London, after abandoning a railway engineering apprenticeship. His early work, influenced by Samuel Palmer, was in etching and engraving, before he moved into ceramics and painting. During the Second World War, as an official war artist, he produced powerful studies of air-raid devastation in London and Swansea. A number of important public commissions followed, including a Crucifixion for St Matthew's, Northampton (1944), and, one of his most celebrated works, the design for the tapestry Christ in Glory in the new Coventry cathedral in 1962. A portrait of Somerset Maugham (1949), now in the Tate Gallery, was the first of several strong representations of famous people. That of Winston Churchill was commissioned by Parliament, but destroyed by the sitter's wife. Sutherland's first love remained landscape, especially in Wales, where he established a gallery at Picton castle.
June Cochrane
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Sutherland, Graham
