Graham Sutherland, O.M. (1903-1980)

Sutherland had picked up a toad on the road from Menton in the South of France in 1958. The present work is the first in a series of five large oils that Sutherland painted of this subject.

Douglas Cooper comments, 'Whereas in the past his animals were somewhat stylised and presented in the form of exhibits, today he depicts them more naturalistically in romantically suggested settings ... One toad seeks to escape from imprisonment in a glass jar, while another [the present work], emerging from some dank corner, turns the beam of his orange eye on the world and stretches out his fierce claw-like paw as though to strike down some prey' (op. cit., p. 49).