Ideas for Composition of Miners Drilling in a Confined Stope, 1942

Acquired directly from the artist by the previous owner

Torino, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Sutherland, 1965 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 32, p. 95);
London, Imperial War Museum, Graham Sutherland, The War Drawings, 1982 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 66);
Genova, Museo dell’Accademia Liguistica de Belle Arti, Sutherland, Storia Segreta 1922-1979 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 58, p. 65);
Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: The Impact of War, 15 October 2014 – 4 January 2015;
Hastings, Jerwood Gallery, Century: 100 Modern British Artists, 23 October 2016 – 8 January 2017;
Woking, The Lightbox, John Minton and the Romantic Tradition, 28 January 2017 – 9 March 2017;
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Land | Sea | Life: A British Art Collection, 20 October 2017 – 17 February 2018;
Sheffield, Museums Sheffield, Darkness into Light, 20 October 2018 – 13 January 2019;
Hull, Ferens Art Gallery, Reflection: British Art in an Age of Change, 17 August 2019 – 5 January 2020;
Woking, The Lightbox, NightShaking with The Ingram Collection, 10 July – 19 September 2021

R. Tassi, Sutherland Disegni di guerra, Electa Milano, 1979 (illustrated, no. 67, p. 77);
Sutherland, The Wartime Drawings, Electa International, 1980 (illustrated no. 67, p. 81)

The War Artists’ Advisory Committee assigned Graham Sutherland to three weeks spent underground in the Cornish tin-mines in 1942. Sutherland was moved by the variety of shapes, colours and textures of the mines. He wrote to Sir Kenneth Clark that he found this subterranean world ‘stupendous and thrilling’. This drawing is closely related to Two Miners Drilling, 1942-3.