Portrait of Milner Gray

Milner Gray (b.1899) had known the Sutherlands since the early 1930s. He had acted as intermediary for a number of commissions as well as introducing the artist to Jack Beddington who was responsible for Shell's advertising and Frank Pick of London Underground. Milner Gray had been concerned with the founding of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers, as well being a founder partner of the Design Research Unit in 1942 with Herbert Read, Mischa Black (see lot 59) and Marcus Brumwell. An early pamphlet explained the Unit's aims, 'Like every aspect of modern industry, design should be a co-operative activity, and the function of D.R.U. is to focus on every project it undertakes [utilises] the combined knowledge and experience of several creative minds since it believes that only by pooling talents of a team of designers is it possible to offer a service capable of meeting every demand from the wide and varied field of present-day industry' (see P. Garner, The Contemporary Decorative Arts from 1940 to the present day, London, 1980, pp.182,184).

Roger Berthoud (loc. cit.) explains how the present portrait, one of the last paintings Sutherland completed, came to be painted: 'In September 1979 Graham had finished a head-and-shoulders study of Milner Gray for the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers' London headquarters: Gray had been a founder member and president and Graham a member. By now rather bald and faintly Pickwickian in appearance, Gray arrived at the Villa Blanche for sittings in May 1979. The society had only ¨1,000 available and expected only a sketch. Graham decided he deserved an oil, which they got for the same price'.