Path through a Field, Wye Valley (recto); Figure in the field (verso)

In Sutherland's post-war landscapes there are increasing references, direct and indirect, to man and his activities. He notices not only the 'imprint of man' on nature, in harvested corn and tilled fields, but also depicts man himself, surveying his handiwork, wandering through fields or inspecting vines. In the present watercolour and with the 'real' figures he uses in Path through Plantation, 1950 (see D. Cooper, The Work of Graham Sutherland, London, 1961, pls. 108a and 109), Sutherland is trying to pin down his sudden awareness of 'the mysterious immediacy of a figure standing in a room or against a hedge, in its shadow'.