Footnotes

Provenance
With Galleria Rinaldo Rotta, Genoa, where purchased by
Private Collection
Their sale; Cambi Casa d'Aste, Milan, 8 May 2018, lot 372, where purchased by the present owner
Private Collection, Italy

Please note a black and white photograph of the work signed by Kathleen Sutherland is included with this lot.

Almost certainly depicting a view across the estuary at Sandy Haven, Pembrokeshire, Estuary Foreshore was painted just two years prior to Sutherland's death in 1980. The artist returned to this picturesque part of south Wales in 1967 for the first time in over twenty years. It was a remarkably inspiring place for Sutherland who used its natural and geographic wonders to great effect during his formative years in the 1930s. As with Estuary with Birds painted in 1971-72 (Picton Castle Trust), the present lot takes a panoramic view of the area at low tide with its distinctive pinkish rocks rising from the sand in fragmented formations. Roger Berthoud, the artist's biographer, comments on this time that Sutherland's imagery 'took on some richly erotic overtones' as the erect columns of rock became distinctly phallic in shape. This imagery has been transferred to Estuary Foreshore with three upright yellow structures dominating the composition, piercing the green woodland beyond. Typically, with his second Welsh phase, the paint is very thinly and fluidly applied so that the feint pencil squaring for transfer can be discerned, in parts, underneath.

Rosalind Thuillier comments on this time:

'Having thought he had earlier discovered almost everything about Pembrokeshire before he began working in France in the late 1940s and took up residence in 1955, Sutherland now realised that he had been wrong. Subjects that appealed to him before his departure and indeed had continued to inspire him throughout his time in France seemed even more vibrant and attractive and certainly were to provide renewed inspiration for his painting over the next thirteen years. The galaxy of shapes and forms were to become even more of an obsession.' (Rosalind Thuillier, Graham Sutherland, Life, Work and Ideas, Lutterworth Press, Cambridge, 2015, pp.193-194).