David Macbeth Sutherland RSA was a Scottish painter and influential art teacher, best known for his landscapes of the Highlands and west coast of Scotland.
Born in Wick, Caithness, in 1883, Sutherland moved to Edinburgh to study at the Royal Scottish Academy Schools and Edinburgh College of Art, where he studied under Charles Hodge Mackie. In 1911 he was awarded the prestigious Carnegie Travelling Scholarship, enabling him to travel and work in Spain, France and the Netherlands.
Sutherland was one of the original members of the Edinburgh Group, an important circle of young artists who shared a studio at Picardy Place and began exhibiting together in the years before the First World War.
During the war he served with the 16th Royal Scots, the celebrated McCrae's Battalion, and was awarded the Military Cross. Following his return to Edinburgh he resumed teaching at Edinburgh College of Art, where his students included two of the most important Scottish painters of the following generation, Sir William Gillies and Sir William MacTaggart.
In 1924 Sutherland married fellow artist Dorothy Johnstone, herself a significant figure in twentieth-century Scottish painting and another member of the Edinburgh Group.
Sutherland left Edinburgh in 1933 to become Director of Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen, remaining there until his retirement in 1948. During the Second World War he also worked as an official war artist, recording the Newfoundland lumberjacks working in Scotland.
He was elected an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1922 and became a full Academician in 1937.
Although Sutherland was also an accomplished portrait and still-life painter, landscape remained central to his work. His childhood in Wick fostered a lifelong fascination with the sea and the Scottish landscape, and he returned repeatedly to the Highlands and west coast, particularly Wester Ross, Plockton and the area around Loch Carron.
Sutherland died in 1973. His work is held in a number of public collections, including Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums.
Unsigned.
Gouache on board.
Good, untouched condition.
Framed.
