Galerie Le Point, Monte Carlo, where acquired by the present owner, June 1983

Original canvas. The canvas undulates very slightly in the bottom right hand corner, with a small, tiny pin hole visible to the bottom centre of the composition. There is very minor paint reticulation to isolated areas of the black pigment, including surrounding the central composition belt. Elsewhere there are one or two very tiny slight possible scuffs to the green in the bottom right hand corner, only visible upon extremely close inspection. This excepting the work appears in very good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals some isolated minor spots of fluorescence which appear in keeping with the nature of the artist's techniques, and do not suggest retouchings. Housed in an ornate, gilt frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work
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‘I wish I could give you some idea of the exultant strangeness of this place… The whole setting is one of exuberance – of darkness and light – of decay and life. Rarely have I been so conscious of the contrasting of these elements in so small a compass’ (Sutherland on Pembrokeshire, Horizon, April 1942, pp.225-35).

 In 1967 Graham Sutherland revisited Pembrokeshire – the landscape which had inspired his early career - for the first time in over twenty years. His re-engagement with the place was immediate and powerful. So intense was this connection that Sutherland found himself bitterly regretting the time he had been away; ‘…I thought I had exhausted what the countryside had to offer both as a “vocabulary” & as inspiration. I was sadly mistaken…’ (Sutherland, letter of 17^th March 1976, quoted in Sutherland in Wales, Alistair McAlpine, London 1976, p.6).

The profound impact of this landscape on Sutherland once more is keenly felt in the works of his later career and Le Lierre is one of the most evocative examples. Approaching the subject with fresh eyes, he employed a rather different technique from his earlier paintings. The oils of the late 1930s and 1940s were often densely worked but in paintings like the present, the paint is more thinly applied, allowing the colours to bounce back off the white of the primed canvas and imbuing the whole with a glowing and poetic light. As was definitive of Sutherland’s career, the natural elements become surrogates for bodily imagery, as well as vehicles for arousing an emotional response in the viewer. The twisted, intertwined shapes here emerge prominently from the large expanse of darkness, instilling a strong and disquieting atmosphere in the work. In paintings such as this, the intensity of Sutherland’s response to the landscape is felt, encapsulating the powerful vision which informed his career. He wa💝s always aware of the struggle within nature, of one element against another, and 🐽this sense of the inner complexities within the forms he observes, imagines and paints is what links his work so closely to the romantic past in British art.