Sutherland, Graham Vivian 1903-80
English artist

Born in London, he studied at Goldsmith's College School of Art, and worked mainly as an etcher until 1930. During the next 10 years he made his reputation as a painter of Romantic, mainly abstract landscapes, with superb, if arbitrary, colouring. From 1941 to 1945 he was an official war artist. In 1946 he was commissioned to paint a Crucifixion for St Matthew's Church, Northampton, and after that he produced several memorable portraits, including W Somerset Maugham (1949) and a controversial portrait of Sir Winston Churchill (1954) which was destroyed on the instructions of Lady Churchill. He also designed ceramics, posters and textiles: his large tapestry, Christ in Glory, was hung in the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962.

Bibliography: Francesco Arcangeli, Graham Sutherland (1973)