Sutherland (Graham Vivian)

, Twenty-One Gallery, 1925.
Graham Sutherland (1903-1980) studied etching under Frederick Griggs, working in an accomplished style in the pastoral tradition of William Blake and Samuel Palmer. This formed the basis of his early commercial success in the 1920s, selling to both British and American buyers. This significant early plate from 1925, the year of Sutherland’s first exhibition at the Twenty-One Gallery, epitomises this early style with its solitary rustic figure bending under the weight of his burden, echoing the etched curves of the trees, the haystack and the rutted track. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 significantly disrupted the market, and cast a long shadow over the world. Sutherland’s subsequent style took on a darker, more brooding air, and echoes of the more surreal forms of De Chirico and Nash that paved the way for his later work.

Provenance: ex-collection of Mattei Radev (1927-2009), inherited from Eardley Knollys (1902-1991), artist, critic, and art dealer, member of the Bloomsbury Group, who purchased it from Sotheby’s, February, 1971..
135 by 187mm (5¼ by 7¼ inches).