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Lot Essay
Sutherland produced two works called 'Red Tree' in 1936. The inspiration, as he told Andrew Causey (Illustrated London News CCXVIII, 'Graham Sutherland Explains His Art', 19 February 1966, p. 30) coming from a found object, a piece of flotsam he had seen washed up somewhere, 'The one field in which the surrealist helped me to widen my range was in their propagation of the idea that there was worthy subject matter for painting in objects the painter would never have looked at before ... Surrealism helped me to realise that forms which interested me existed already in nature, and were waiting for me to find them.'
The present work is partly abstracted from the other work, it retains the dark shadow under the form and the arched shape on the right, however the organic forms of the wood have given way to a flat abstract pattern, and the atmospheric handling of the landscape has been replaced by hard, solid colours (loc. cit). The other work entitled 'Red Tree' (Private Collection) from the same year was previously in the collection of Kenneth Clark.
The present work is partly abstracted from the other work, it retains the dark shadow under the form and the arched shape on the right, however the organic forms of the wood have given way to a flat abstract pattern, and the atmospheric handling of the landscape has been replaced by hard, solid colours (loc. cit). The other work entitled 'Red Tree' (Private Collection) from the same year was previously in the collection of Kenneth Clark.