Jan Toorop (1858-1928)
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's… Read more WORKS ON PAPER FROM THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AVANT-GARDES The Collection of a Scholar, Sold to Benefit Humanitarian Causes
Graham Sutherland, O.M. (1903-1980)

Cactus

Details
Graham Sutherland, O.M. (1903-1980)
Cactus
signed 'Sutherland' (lower right)
gouache and pencil on paper, squared for transfer
6 ¾ x 6 in. (17 x 15.4 cm.)
Executed circa 1950
Provenance
Galleria d'arte Narciso, Turin (no. SUT.G/21).
Acquired from the above by the present owner.
Special notice
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

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Ottavia Marchitelli
Ottavia Marchitelli

Lot Essay

STUDIES FROM IMPORTANT BODIES OF WORK
BY GRAHAM SUTHERLAND

The four works by Sutherland included in this collection (lots 141-142, 181-182) represent several dominant motifs the artist adopted from the late-1930s into the early 1950s, during the Second World War and in its aftermath. All but one of these motifs are represented by important oil paintings which inhabit prominent public art collections: Cactus from 1950 at the University of Michigan Art Museum see lot 181), Thorn Trees from 1945 in the Collection of the British Council (see lot 182), Entrance to a Lane from 1939 residing at the Tate, London (see lot 141).

Created in the artist’s home town of Trottiscliffe, Kent, Cactus echoes Sutherland’s War-period themes in its thorny appearance. However, this particular subject, with its rounded, softer, appearance derives from Sutherlands trips to the South of France, after the War, where he discovered a myriad of new subjects, including the cactus. This 1950 composition hints towards the fugitive line form of Arshile Gorky’s early 1940s canvases, with stark, black ink, contrasted against saturated swathes of earthy colour and delicate palimpsests of pencil, ink, gouache veiling one another to create lyrical, layered dialogues.

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