drawing;
sketch-book
- Museum number
- 1980,1011.159.1-72
- Description
-
Sketchbook with studies for paintings of Christ's Passion. 1946. Containing 72 leaves in black linen boards; on the inside cover is the manufacturer's label of Geo. Rowney, 'Sketcher's Note Book, Series A 42 Size No.3'. The pages, almost without exception are drawn on both recto and verso in black crayon.
F1r to F5v Studies for a 'Disposition from the Cross'
F6r to F10v Studies for the 'Road to Calvary'
F11r to F32v Studies for 'Deposition'
F34r to F47v Studies for 'Crucifixion'
F48r to F50v Studies for 'Deposition'
F51r to F71v Studies for 'Road to Calvary'
F72r Study for Christ's legs in the Northampton Crucifixion
F72v Seated figure
Black crayon
- Production date
- 1946
- Curator's comments
- Sutherland's work began to take a new turn when he received a commission in 1944 to paint a Crucifixion for St. Matthew's Church, Northampton, a picture he executed two years later. In this work Christ's body, suspended in torment against a purple background, becomes a powerful image of physical and spiritual suffering. While planning this picture and working on these studies, Sutherland was informed by ‘hidden’ forms in nature and became fascinated by thorn-bushes, whose thorns reminded him of the crucifixion of Christ. He painted a series of "Thorn Trees" and "Thorn Heads" which paraphrased the crucifixion. This procedure of evoking the presence of a human figure through a kind of substitution became characteristic of a great deal of his subsequent work.
For Sutherland the crucifixion symbolised ‘a duality which has always fascinated me. It is the most tragic of all themes yet inherent in it is the promise of salvation. It is the symbol of the precarious balanced moment… it is that moment when the sky seems superbly blue, and when one feels it is only blue in that superb way because at any moment it could be clack… and on that point of balance one may fall into great gloom or rise to great happiness.’
It was at this time he saw photographs of victims of the concentration camps at Auschwitz, Belsen and Buchenwald, which reminded him of the Crucifixions of Grunewald. These influenced his subsequent studies and finished religious paintings and portraits.
The studies in this sketchbook, specifically those of the crucifixion (F34r to F47v) relate to subsequent drawings of the subject in the BM's collection: a single sheet black charcoal drawing, 1980,1011.148 and a painted study for ‘Christ in Glory’ Coventry Cathedral tapestry, 1980,1011.147. For a related study for the Coventry tapestry in the BM collection, see F6r Hieratic figure, black crayon in sketchbook 1980,1011.161.1-22.
The studies for ‘Road to Calvary’ relate to the later study for ‘Christ carrying the Cross’, 1953 (see 1980,1011.149).
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1980
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1980,1011.159.1-72