Steel Ladle by Graham Sutherland, gouache, ink, graphite and collaged paper on paper

Graham Sutherland was employed as a full-time Official War Artist, placed with the Ministry of Home Security to depict scenes of bomb damage, and then with the Ministry of Supply, to represent industrial production.

He made this drawing in 1942 when he travelled to South Wales to represent iron foundries and steelworks which supported the production of armaments for the war. His visits to Cardiff, Dowlais and Port Talbot were timed to follow different stages of operations as and when they occurred, and, on finding bus travel to be less than reliable or expedient, he drove between the plants. In this drawing Sutherland represents molten steel being poured into a ladle – a bucket-shaped vessel – from a furnace, following the conversion of iron into steel. Although he did not make a finished picture of this composition, he 'squared up' the study with a pencil grid, indicating his interest in scaling the image for an enlarged version. Sutherland had experimented with evoking tension and emotion in his works by representing objects in semi-abstract, biomorphic ways, as if they were living entities. He compared his vision of steelmaking with human forms and movements: ‘As the hand feeds the mouth so did the long scoops which plunged into the furnace openings feed them, and the metal containers pouring molten iron into ladles had great encrusted mouths’. The photographer Cecil Beaton explained how Sutherland’s work went further than that of photographers to describe the dramatic industrial environment: ‘our eyes become attuned, unlike the camera lens, to the nuances of darkness amid a strange world that is spasmodically suffused by flashes of green, magenta, puce and golden light. In this world of molten metals, of glowing furnaces, soot and firework sparks, that only the painter can interpret, Graham Sutherland has reverently seized his opportunity to capture this fleeting phenomenon of sequined brilliance, of mystery, of glowing magic’. Sutherland evokes the heat of poured metal with swirling gestures of yellow and orange paint contrasted with crusty black and smoky textures conveyed through ink. Purchased in 2025. Copyright: the artist’s estate / RAF Museum.