BERWICK-UPON-TWEED.- A new exhibition celebrating the remarkable, if little researched, life of the British art patron and collector, Helen Sutherland (1881–1965) opened at
The Granary Gallery, Berwick-upon-Tweed to herald the summer in Northumberland.
Truth and Beauty: The 20th Century British Art of Pioneering Collector Helen Sutherland explores the importance of her early patronage of artists - such as Ben Nicholson (1894-1982), Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981), and David Jones (1895-1974) - within the context of the development of modern British art in the early 1930s.
On her mother’s death in 1920, Helen Sutherland became an heiress, receiving a £12,000 legacy and the benefit of a Trust fund. Two years later, when she was 41, her father Sir Thomas Sutherland (Chairman of the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company) died and Helen inherited a further £30,000, plus around £40,000 derived from half the value of his London properties and their contents. With her unhappy marriage to Richard ‘Dick’ Denman annulled several years earlier, Sutherland was now wealthy, without ties and wholly able to indulge her passion for art.
She began by acquiring European pieces by the likes of Courbet and Seurat, while meeting Picasso and Brancusi during a trip to Paris. Back in London, she bought works by Paul Nash, Duncan Grant and Cedric Morris. In 1925, Sutherland met Ben and Winifred Nicholson, buying two of their paintings and, in doing so, embarked on a new direction. Through her friendship with the Nicholsons, Sutherland became more a cultivator than a pure collector, assuming the role of patron to a number of emerging artists.
Sutherland’s tastes were eclectic and brave. At a time when the art world establishment was still somewhat reluctant to engage with modern art and its creators, she was one of the first collectors in the UK to recognise the talent of emerging artists, such as Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). She bought the Dutch painter’s Composition B (No.II) with Red (1935), at an exhibition that otherwise attracted poor sales for the artist’s avant-garde work.
Despite having a home in London, between 1929 and 1939 Sutherland leased Rock Hall, near Alnwick in Northumberland, effectively as a sanctuary away from the Capital for her burgeoning circle of artist friends. During her tenure of the 18th-century country house, the Nicholsons were regular guests, as was David Jones. It was while attending a party at Sutherland’s Belgravia home in 1929, that Jones was invited to Rock Hall. He went up by train in August that year. He then stayed through to the following Autumn because, as Helen observed at the time, “he’s bad at going.” Sutherland was not just Jones’ patron but also his chief collector, owning over 200 of his paintings, most of which she kept at Rock Hall.
As a key part of the exhibition, some of Jones’ works will be displayed, including Rock Hall in the Garden (1929) which is very rarely seen in public. The Tate has kindly loaned a later painting from one of his stays in Northumberland, The Chapel in the Park (1932) - Jones kept a room above the front door of Rock Hall and the view his window inspired a number of his watercolours, including that work. Jones was fascinated by Welsh history and the Arthurian myths, and it is thought that he identified the church at Rock with the ‘Chapel Perilous’ in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
Truth and Beauty also features a number of other seldom displayed loans drawn from private collections that span the entire duration of the time Sutherland collected art, with works by artists including Barbara Hepworth’s (1903-1975) Forms in Movement (1943), Reclining Figures (1933) by Henry Moore (1898-1986), Alfred Wallis’ (1855-1942) Sailing Ship (late 1920s) and Green Moon and Rocks (1945) by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004) among the exhibition’s many highlights.
The exhibition also shines a spotlight on an interesting encounter between Jones, Sutherland and members of the Ashington Group, also knowns as the ‘Pitmen Painters’. On Sunday 21 July 1935 Helen had invited 17 miners from the Northumbrian town to Rock Hall for afternoon tea. David was assigned the role of guiding the visitors around the house and explaining the modern paintings on display. Initially apprehensive, Jones soon found that his audience was "intelligent and sensitive, twenty times more ‘aware’ than most people one meets".
In return, Sutherland was also moved to acquire some of the group’s work, including Arthur Whinnon’s St. Francis and George Blessed’s Two Miners, One Doing Up a Shoe. There was genuine affection between the miners and their patron, as one member, Jimmy Floyd, was quoted as saying: “Give her my picture. I can always paint another picture, but we could never get another Miss Sutherland.” For her part, Sutherland regarded a painting by a pitman every bit as worthy as a Picasso.
Although, it has been noted, that Sutherland was Jones’ greatest patron, Truth and Beauty reveals the close and abiding bond that she shared with the Nicholsons, especially Ben.
1922-23 (two people: Lake Shore) was one of the first of his paintings that she acquired, with other pieces including 1925 (still life with cups, jugs, mugs and goblet), 1928 (Walton Wood cottage No.1) and 1936 (white relief), reflecting her steadfast willingness to support his work as he experimented with different styles and subjects. She referred to his white reliefs as “My little darlings”, while seeing each change in his output as a challenge to “fathom” his latest thinking and methodology. Such was her devotion to Nicholson that on one occasion, when her French corset-maker was late for an appointment, she exclaimed: “I must rush out and buy a Ben.”
Having married in 1920, the Nicholson’s marriage did not endure. The couple began to separate in 1931 but still spent a considerable amount of time together. Ben visited Winifred on the Isle of Wight in 1932, Cornwall in 1932, and Paris a number of times in the early 1930s. He made the first of his series of white reliefs, the seminal 1935 (white relief Quai d’Auteuil), while staying with Winifred in the same year; naming it after the Parisian street where she lived.
At the time, he wrote to Barbara Hepworth, with whom he was also now in a relationship, saying: “I wish I could show you the white relief. It is just large enough to make a white expanse in any room – + a marvellous peacefulness, + exciting landscape of foothills, + mountains, + still sunlight + snow.”
The couple finally divorced in 1938, with Ben marrying Barbara later in that same year. Throughout, Helen Sutherland remained both a friend and patron to the Nicholsons and, in turn, Hepworth.
Winifred’s subjects varied from still life (Daffodils and Hyacinths, 1950-55) to cosy domestic scenes (Fireside, 1956), landscapes and seasonal views (Winter Fishbourne, 1932). The exhibition affords visitors a chance to see several of her virtually unknown paintings, loaned especially from private collections for Truth and Beauty, these include Yellow Flags and Moth (1932), Pinks and Roses at Cockley Moor (1955).
Her wealth was not immune, however, to the effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s but as Nicholson commented in a letter to Sutherland: “I note your remark about being empty in purse, but I think if you were totally and forever empty in purse, I should still want to show you new work, and I think the work would still want you look at it.”
Helen Sutherland was the most important collector for both Ben and Winifred, both in the size of her collection and particularly for Ben, the understanding she gave him of his early work, when not many people could see what the point of his pictures was.”
James Lowther, Head of Visual Art, Maltings says: “Helen Sutherland was a unique supporter of modern British art, helping artists such as the Nicholsons and David Jones throughout their careers. Arguably, she was Ben and Winifred’s most important collector, both in the size of her collection and particularly for Ben, the understanding she gave his early work, at a time when not many people could see what the point of his pictures was.
