SUTTON R.A., Philip
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Facts about this piece
ENGLISH b.1928
JENNY IN A BLACK HAT
OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED
40
Excellent
Author Bio
Philip Sutton was a painter, printmaker, ceramicist and art teacher who was noted for his versatility. Apart from his rich, colourful paintings exhibited in shows round Britain, he also produced tapestry designs at West Dean College, a wall of tiles for DNB Bank in Amsterdam, stamps commissioned by the Post Office and a poster for London Transport.Although Philip Sutton was born in Poole in Dorset in 1928, he was brought up in the East End of London. He left school aged fourteen and then worked in a drawing office for three years before undertaking his National Service which saw him involved in the Berlin Airlift.
Upon his return to civilian life, he entered the Slade School of Fine Art and was a pupil there from 1948 to 1953. He won the Summer Composition Prize and used the scholarships that he received to travel to France, Italy and Spain. Sutton had returned to the Slade as a teacher in 1954, remaining there until 1963 and then left to travel to Australia and Fiji to paint for a year. The light in particular, but also the environment, suited his technique and style because he liked to paint from life using bright colours. The journey and his work undertaken during it was recorded by his wife Heather in her film “Philip Sutton Working in Fiji.”
In 1956 he was elected a member of the London Group and this year was also the first in which he held his initial one-man show. This was at the London Gallery of Roland, Browse and Delbanco and he continued to exhibit there throughout his career. He won a special award at John Moore’s Liverpool Exhibition in 1957 and six years later achieved second prize.
Leeds City Art Gallery staged a retrospective of his career in 1960 and the Royal Academy held another in 1977. It was in that year that he was made an associate member of the RA and achieved full membership in 1989. This was also the same year that he began painting in Pembrokeshire, facilitated by moving to Manorbier near Tenby. Tenby Museum and Art Gallery was opened in 1995 and “Philip Sutton in Pembrokeshire” was staged to celebrate this.
Other exhibitions included: Odette Gilbert Gallery in 1987 (ceramics); Berkeley Square Gallery in 1999 in combination with his son the photographer Jacob; Oriel Theatre Clwyd touring show in 1993 and 1994; “Paintings from Manorbier” at Piano Nobile Fine Paintings in 2001; “A Celebration of Colour” at Gallery 27 in 2004; unseen woodcuts produced between 1962 and 1976 at the Royal Academy in 2005 and in 2006, an exhibition at the Richmond Hill Gallery.
The Tate Gallery and the Art’s Council hold examples of Philip Sutton’s work as do many other British and foreign collectors.
Bibliography: Artists in Britain since 1945 – David Buckman