Graham Sutherland, O.M.

Buchholz Gallery, New York
Andrew C. Ritchie, New Haven, Connecticut
Marlborough Fine Art, London
Marlborough Galleria d'Art, Rome
Private Collection

New York, Buchholz Gallery, Graham Sutherland, February - March 1946, no.6.

Douglas Cooper, The Work of Graham Sutherland, Lund Humphries, London, 1961, no.61d, illustrated p. 97;
John Hayes, Graham Sutherland, Phaidon, Oxford, 1980, no.60,  illustrated p.97;
Ronald Alley, Graham Sutherland, exh.cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1982, p.105;
Roger Berthoud, Graham Sutherland, A Biography, Faber and Faber, London, 1982.

The canvas is unlined. There is slight craquelure to an area of pink paint which surrounds the green shape on the lamp in the upper left quadrant, and to a section of black paint in the lower right quadrant. There is also a small area of paint separation in the lower right quadrant and a small puncture to the canvas in the lower right quadrant. All of this can be seen in the catalogue illustration. There are two indentations to the canvas, one in the upper left corner and one in the lower right corner which appear to be caused by a slightly uneven stretcher. Under ultra-violet light no retouching is evident. Held in a rectilinear gilt frame with a canvas slip. The yellow paint is slightly more green and the lamp more pink than in the catalogue illustration.
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The Lamp is one of two representations of the same subject painted in 1944 when the Sutherlands were staying in a small cottage in Sandy Haven, Pembrokeshire. Seen from opposite sides, both versions employ a brighter palette than is usual for Sutherland at this time, and in the present painting the warm yellows and green help to create an air of peace and security, as does the reassuring Victoriana of the lamp itself. Sandy Haven was the source for Sutherland’s most successful pre-war work, including the Entrance to a Lane series, and thus this air of calm may well be a reflection of an escape from the scenes of heavy industry and urban devastation that had been the focus of his work as an official war artist.