Dimensions: image: 130 x 190 mm support: 169 x 228 mm
Copyright: © The estate of Graham Sutherland | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: So, this is "Pastoral" by Graham Sutherland. It's a small print from the Tate collection. It has this really intense, almost gothic mood about it. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Well, immediately I’m drawn to the textures – like the bark of a very old tree – it’s as if Sutherland is feeling his way through the landscape. Does it remind you of anywhere you've ever been? Editor: Kind of. It reminds me of drawings of Blake. Curator: Ah! That visionary quality. Exactly. It's a pastoral, but with a twist of something wilder. Editor: I see that now. It's not just pretty. Curator: Precisely! And isn’t that far more interesting?
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sutherland-pastoral-p07117
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During the 1920s Sutherland produced a series of prints and drawings directly inspired by the example of Samuel Palmer. The series culminated in this work, whose simplified forms and detailed technique recall Palmer. However, the strange shadows and bizarrely gnarled and twisted tree trunks strike a more personal note. Here Sutherland transforms the Palmeresque evocation of an Arcadian idyll into a more pagan image, replacing traditional Christian symbolism with animistic forces. The sense of brooding drama seen here was developed in Sutherland's landscape paintings of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Gallery label, August 2004
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