Welsh Landscape with Roads (1936)

Graham Vivian Sutherland

oil on canvas

Tate, London, Liverpool and St Ives

Classification:

Painting

Materials:

Oil, Canvas

Physical Object Description:

Inscribed in black paint, bottom left: ‘Graham Sutherland’. Inscribed on back of canvas in pencil: ‘Welsh Landscape’ running vertically at right, and on top selvage ‘Welsh Landscape’. Squared-up, presumably to aid in the translation of a smaller image. The pencil grid is numbered along the left-hand edge and, where the green glaze was applied over much of that side of the canvas, the pencil lines and digits have been re-drawn into the paint.

Dimensions:

61 x 91.4 cm

Accession Number:

N05666

Credit:

Presented by the Contemporary Art Society, 1946

Scheme:

Historic Purchase by Purchaser (1914-2008)

Ownership history:

Purchased from Rosenberg & Helft Galleries Ltd by The Hon. Jasper Nicholas Ridley (1887-1951) for the the Contemporary Art Society, 1938 (for £35); presented to the Tate Gallery, 1946

Relationship:

The Hon. Jasper Nicholas Ridley Rosenberg & Helft, London Tate, London, Liverpool and St Ives

Subject:

Landscape

Welsh Landscape with Roads (1936) derived from the hills and valley near Porthclais on the outskirts of St David's, Pembrokeshire in Wales. Graham Sutherland wrote that such paintings expressed the 'intellectual and emotional' essence of a place. He conjures up a sense of the landscape's ancient past through the inclusion of the animal skull and what may be standing stones in the distance. The unnaturalistic colouring, dramatic shaft of sunlight and minuscule fleeing figure create a threatening atmosphere. While the theme of a tiny man dwarfed by nature was common in eighteenth-century painting, Sutherland's transformation of the landscape into a eerie, primordial scene is distinctly modern.

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