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拍品专文
This appears to be the first and most elaborate of a cluster of paintings on the theme of roses that Graham Sutherland produced in 1950-51 (see D. Cooper, The Work of Graham Sutherland, London, 1961, nos. 107b-d). At this point, he was widely regarded as the most impressive and influential British painter of the day. Yet this particular strand of imagery might seem a surprising choice given the artist's more familiar use at this time of spiky thorn bushes and palms and of gnarled root forms, which served to inject into his work a note of menace and anxiety. The presence of such qualities was viewed and admired by critics as appropriate to the psychological aftermath of the Second World War.
Perhaps Sutherland himself was wary of being typecast. At any rate, the rose pictures seem more life-enhancing in mood and more Matissean in idiom than the generality of his work over the last couple of years. Nevertheless, they are not entirely out of line with his mainstream work. To the extent that the two main elements in this picture take on anthropomorphic resonances, as perhaps male and female presences, we might see an analogy with Sutherland's Association of Oaks (1940: collection Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh), where found tree root forms take on exactly those connotations. We might equally note his gathering interest at this point in ambiguous vertical forms, as in the extended Standing Form series that he had begun the previous year.
The rose paintings also register an apparent cross fertilisation between his work in painting and an ongoing engagement with the decorative arts that Sutherland clearly valued for more than just financial reasons. Thus the same motif had featured in the White Rose range of china produced to Sutherland's design by Foley's in 1938; and again as a repeat motif in the Sutherland Rose fabric that the artist designed in 1940 and that went into production with Helios Ltd after the war (both collection Victoria & Albert Museum, London). The rose motif then reappeared in the context of Sutherland's tapestry designs, which were stimulated in part by an approach from Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh (see Robert Melville, 'Contemporary British Tapestry', The Ambassador, London, no. 7, 1949, pp. 126-129 and cover). The paintings under consideration may at some level have been demonstrations of the more decorative vein in his work that could readily transfer into a medium like tapestry.
We are very grateful to Martin Hammer for preparing the catalogue entries for lots 251 and 252.
Perhaps Sutherland himself was wary of being typecast. At any rate, the rose pictures seem more life-enhancing in mood and more Matissean in idiom than the generality of his work over the last couple of years. Nevertheless, they are not entirely out of line with his mainstream work. To the extent that the two main elements in this picture take on anthropomorphic resonances, as perhaps male and female presences, we might see an analogy with Sutherland's Association of Oaks (1940: collection Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh), where found tree root forms take on exactly those connotations. We might equally note his gathering interest at this point in ambiguous vertical forms, as in the extended Standing Form series that he had begun the previous year.
The rose paintings also register an apparent cross fertilisation between his work in painting and an ongoing engagement with the decorative arts that Sutherland clearly valued for more than just financial reasons. Thus the same motif had featured in the White Rose range of china produced to Sutherland's design by Foley's in 1938; and again as a repeat motif in the Sutherland Rose fabric that the artist designed in 1940 and that went into production with Helios Ltd after the war (both collection Victoria & Albert Museum, London). The rose motif then reappeared in the context of Sutherland's tapestry designs, which were stimulated in part by an approach from Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh (see Robert Melville, 'Contemporary British Tapestry', The Ambassador, London, no. 7, 1949, pp. 126-129 and cover). The paintings under consideration may at some level have been demonstrations of the more decorative vein in his work that could readily transfer into a medium like tapestry.
We are very grateful to Martin Hammer for preparing the catalogue entries for lots 251 and 252.