Orchard at Trottiscliffe

Orchard at Trottiscliffe
Orchard at Trottiscliffe
© Estate of Graham Sutherland
(English, 1903-1980)

Orchard at Trottiscliffe

Date1943
Mediumpen and ink, pencil, gouache on paper
Dimensionsoverall: 7 7/8 x 6 1/8 in. (20 x 15.6 cm) frame: 18 5/8 × 14 5/8 × 1 1/2 in. (47.3 × 37.1 × 3.8 cm)
ClassificationDRAWINGS
Credit LineSBMA, Gift of Buchholz Gallery
Object number1948.18
Subject(s)
  • landscape
  • trees, landscape
Collection
  • 20th century European
  • European
Sub-Collection(s)
  • English
  • British
On View
Not on view
Label Text

These three works were done during the years when Sutherland was serving as a war artist. Of

Orchard at Trottiscliffe, he writes: 1"It was, I suspect, done in brief moments off from my war

artist activities, which lasted from 1941/42 to the end of the war. I was back in Trottiscliffe

in 1942 and the drawing was made in our garden there." However, rather than reflecting his

wartime experiences, they belong to a sequence of nature studies beginning in the l930's. Relevant

to these studies are his observations in an interview in 1969:2" •.. all my paintings are based on a

sudden and personal meeting with some part of nature. If these forms are filled with a sense of

threatening life, this is because the matter which started me off may have been invested with this.

I think they have no relation at all with my experience as a war painter; on the contrary, I think

the paintings I made as a war painter were influenced by the vocabulary of forms, which I observed

in natural objects."

An evolving view of nature is evident in our three drawings. The earliest, Orchard at Trottiscliffe

of 1943, continues Sutherland's former preoccupation with organic structure. The two later

drawings, dated 1944 and 1946, show new tendencies, which were to come to full realization by

1947-8 and to continue through the l950's. Specifically the colors are lighter, even decorative,

and there is an increased effect of flat planes laid on the surface from bottom to top . Perhaps

also the appearance of man and his imprint on nature in Triple-Tiered Landscape indicates

a new interest in symbolizing human activities as part of nature. It appears to fulfill Sutherland's

admiration for the Welsh landscape in 1942:3 "The astonishing fertility of these valleys and the

complexity of the roads running through them is a delight to the eye .... To see a solitary human

figure descending such a road .. .is to realize the enveloping quality of the earth, which can create,

as it does here, a mysterious space limit- a womb-like enclosure- which gives the human form

an extraordinary focus and significance."

A nearly identical version of Horned Tree Form dated 1944 and approximately the same size

as the museum's drawing, was listed by Douglas Cooper4 as in a private collection in Connecticut

in 1961.


Triple-Tiered Landscape
Graham SUTHERLAND
1944
Horned Tree Form
Graham SUTHERLAND
1946
The Sluice Gate
Graham SUTHERLAND
1924
Flight
John TUNNARD
1944
Last Day
John TUNNARD
1944
Shelter Scene
Henry MOORE
1941
Cat's Cradle
Dante Gabriel ROSSETTI
c. 1855
Demodossola, North Italy
Samuel PROUT
ca. 1829
View of Point Lobos
Samuel COLMAN
1886
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