Page 45 - Studio International - October 1966

Above
Graham Sutherland
Study for low cliff and woods
1937
81 x 5+ in.
Above right
Study of road rising between
hedges 1940
4 1/2 x 31 5/8 in.
Right
Interior of woods 1958
5 3/4 x 5 5/8 in.

One of the difficulties about writing a London com- in the Sutherland sheets of the same period, is, I think,
mentary is the sheer diversity of events. This month is, I to be found in the medium. What Moore was trying to
think, one in which to speak first of delight, rather than catch in this sketchbook was the heroic mood of war-
of theory. At the MARLBOROUGH GALLERY, for instance, time—the sleepers on the underground platforms, the
there is a retrospective show of watercolours by Graham buildings in ruins. All of this is here presented on a tiny
Sutherland, ranging in date from 1933 to the present scale: these are the first jottings for the larger drawings
day. In the upper room of the same gallery are leaves and prints which were to be made later. The drawings
from Henry Moore's war-time sketchbook—the book are rather like the notes which Turner made on that
covers the years 1940-2. It makes a very beautiful, and night in October 1834, when the Houses of Parliament
indeed a very moving joint exhibition. This word burned. Made under immense pressure—of emotion, of
`moving', however, pulls me up. The unabashed emotion excitement, of time—they have an immediate and con-
in these drawings is something which one doesn't so often vincing air of authenticity, an aesthetic charge which
meet with in the art of the present day. The romantic couldn't have been captured in any medium less fluent
mood of the art of the war years now seems very remote and flexible than the one adopted. The reason why the
from present aesthetic pre-occupations. The reason why sketchbook (which belongs to Mrs Irina Moore) has
it succeeds so well in the little drawings by Moore, and now been put on show is an interesting one—the leaves
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