Lot Essay
Raymond Mortimer writing in the July 1948 issue of Harper's Bazaar, Graham Sutherland's New Paintings, (pp.44-71) says 'His recent pictures express his response to the South. Two years ago he went for the first time to the Mediterranean ... he fell in love with the landscape and the life (Sutherland moved to Menton in 1955). Mr Sutherland's (response) is utterly his own, inconveniently personal ... the southern sky we know as inescapably blue becomes ... pink or green. Disconcerting? Possibly. I know only that the first time I saw one of these skies I was at once, as it were, infected with the artist's joy in the violence of the Mediterranean light'.