Graham Sutherland, O.M.

Alex Reid & Lefevre, London, where acquired by Wilfrid A. Evill April 1945 for £68.5.0, by whom bequeathed to Honor Frost in 1963

New York, Buchholz Gallery, Graham Sutherland, 26th February - 23rd March 1946, cat. no.3;
London, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Catalogue of Part of a Collection of Oil Paintings, Water Colours, Drawings and Sculpture Belonging to W. A. Evill, Esq., December 1947 - February 1948, cat. no.60 (as Woman Plucking Sprouts);
Hampstead, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Catalogue of the Greater Portion of a Collection of Modern English Paintings, Water Colours, Drawings and Sculpture Belonging to W. A. Evill, March 1955, cat. no.36 (as Girl in Garden);
London, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Pictures, Drawings, Water Colours and Sculpture, April - May 1961, (part III- section 3), cat. no.8 (as Woman Gathering Spouts);
Brighton, Brighton Art Gallery, The Wilfrid Evill Memorial Exhibition, June - August 1965, cat. no.253, illustrated pl.Vb (as Woman Picking Vegtables).

Douglas Cooper, The Work of Graham Sutherland, Lund Humphries, London, 1961, illustrated pl.61b (as Woman Picking Vegetables).

The colours, particularly the reds and greens, are warmer than they appear in the printed catalogue. The board is sound. The upper edge of the board has a slightly uneven surface, as it appears that the board is made up of different layers of card along this edge. There is a small surface abrasion in the bottom right corner. The surface has recently been cleaned but there are one two remaining specks of staining. There is a tiny fleck of old paint loss to the top of her skirt. Otherwise in good overall condition with strong passages of impasto, notably to the red pigment. Ultraviolet light reveals no apparent signs of retouching. Held in a painted plaster frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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With the end of WWII in sight, Sutherland began to return to the subjects that had occupied him prior to the war, but the experience of the varied subjects he had treated as part of his commission for the WAAC had inevitably added something new to his manner. Considered by many to be the most progressive painter in Britain, and hugely influential on a whole generation of younger artists, such as Clough, Vaughan, Minton, Craxton and Colquhoun, not to mention the young Francis Bacon, Sutherland's work was highly regarded both at home and in the United States. However, this period of acclaim did not coincide with a period of easy achievement for Sutherland, and he found his exploration of newer themes took a great deal of work and self-investigation.

Having been sounded out in 1944 by Rev. Walter Hussey as to the possibility of producing a commission for St.Matthew's Church, Northampton, Sutherland began to explore what was at that point a very rare subject for him, the human figure. Virtually never treated directly before 1939, his work in the blast furnaces of South Wales and the tin mines of Cornwall during WWII had introduced the theme of figures, mostly involved in work, straining and twisting in constrained spaces or bathed in intensely coloured light. Concurrently with his work on the Northampton Crucifixion he began to make paintings in which the figure took the central place, and whilst some of these paintings exhibit a rather caricature-like approach to the figure, the present work demonstrates a very strong presentation of the subject, using simplified forms and a limited palette to achieve the compositional substance. The contorted pose of the woman, and her intent concentration on the execution of her task, does suggest a connection with the work Sutherland was doing at this same time on his large Deposition (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) of 1946 and formerly in Evill's collection, where all the figures, whilst subsumed in the overall composition, display a similar understanding of movement and balance.