Born in London in 1903, Graham Sutherland studied at Goldsmiths School of Art, specialising in printmaking. His early work was predominently romantic landscapes in the tradition of Samuel Palmer and showing the influence of Paul Nash. He gradually moved towards a more surreal and abstract style in the 1930s, twisting elements of the landscape such as branches and roots into unique and unnatural looking distortions.
He served as an official war artist during World War Two, and subsequently received a number of high profile commissions in the 1950s and 1960s, including one for the central tapestry at Coventry Cathedral entitled Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph. He also began to combine insects, birds and animals into his work, and there are many examples of these in this exhibition.
In 1960 Sutherland was awarded the Order of Merit, which, alongside solo exhibitions at the Tate (1982), Museé Picasso, Antibes (1998), and the Dulwich Picture Gallery (2005), has secured his reputation as one of the leading British artists of the postwar period.