Rowland Suddaby;

A Modern Suffolk Painter

Elms at Wissington, 1950. Watercolour on paper.

Once feted as the successor to Christopher Wood by The Redfern Gallery, Rowland Suddaby has been overlooked in recent times. This display of vibrant East Anglian watercolours from the 1940s-60s celebrates his unique style and contribution to Modern British landscape painting from his home in Suffolk.

Lucy Wertheim gave him his first show at the Wertheim Gallery in 1935, where he followed the example of Christopher Wood to be represented by The Redfern Gallery, with a string of successful exhibitions from 1936. Initially painting in Cornwall and London, he moved to Suffolk in the late 1930s, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life.

His watercolours, often combined with ink drawing, have an energy, spirit and immediacy. His images captured the Suffolk landscape through the changing seasons under large East Anglian skies and came to define Suffolk artistically. So much so that Suddaby was chosen to illustrate the Vision of England Suffolk guide by Olive Cook published in 1948.

His work was extremely well received by critics and collectors alike and was purchased by public collections throughout the UK (he is represented in 21 collections regionally), with the Government Art Collection and the Victoria & Albert Museum holding 25 and 24 works by Suddaby respectively.