Graham Sutherland, O.M.

signed with the artist's initials and dated 1976
oil on canvas
100.3 by 96.5cm.; 39 ½ by 38in.
This commissioned work was begun in February 1976 and completed in March

Pierre & São Schlumberger (commissioned from the artist)
Acquired from the estate of the above in 1988 

London, National Portrait Gallery, Portraits by Graham Sutherland, 1977, no. 99, illustrated p. 93

The canvas is not lined and there appear to be no signs of retouching visible under UV light. This work is in very good original condition.
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Graham Sutherland, an English artist born in 1903, was a distinguished portraitist whose roll-call of high-profile sitters famously includes figures as illustrious as Somerset Maughan (see fig. 1, now in the collection of the Tate), Winston Churchill, Baron Elie de Rothschild and Helena Rubinstein, among others. In almost all of these works, the sitter presents him- or herself frontally to the viewer and yet remains at a psychological remove, as though absorbed in their own thoughts. In the present portrait of Pierre Schlumberger, however, Sutherland tears down the psychological boundary between sitter and spectator.

In this portrait, painted over the course of a month between February and March 1976, Pierre Schlumberger sits in profile. His congenial pose, enhanced by his mischievous grin, relaxed posture and the cigar hanging loosely from his hand, suggests a sense of intimacy between sitter and spectator; Schlumberger in fact turns toward the spectator, as though engaged in conversation. He fills a great portion of the canvas, and this closeness magnifies the sense of familiarity between the viewer and the viewed, already established through the sitter’s comfortable pose. The unusually nebulous background serves only to intensity the effect of the sitter’s highly detailed head and eloquent facial expression, as does the rather abstract armchair on which he leans.