Graham Sutherland, “Estuary”, 1946, Oil on Canvas
A neo-Romantic inspired by the pastoral subjects of Samuel Palmer, Graham Sutherland’s haunting paintings captured the rugged beauty of the countryside and the oppressive forces of creeping industrialisation upon it.
For much of the 1930s he chose to paint the Pembrokeshire landscape, attempting to express ‘the intellectual and emotional’ essence of the place. By using dramatic shifts in light, unnaturalistic colouring and animal skulls, he would transform the countryside into a bleak, primordial world in which man and nature were at odds with one another.
Estuary (1946) was one of the last paintings the artist made before fleeing the sulphurous realities of post-war Britain for the sunny environs of South of France. His palette was already changing from the tempestuous greys and ochres of the Welsh countryside for the scorching yellows of the Riviera.