Editing Graham Sutherland (section)

===Post-war career===
In 1944, Sutherland was commissioned by [[Walter Hussey]], the Vicar of [[St Matthew's Church, Northampton]], and an important patron of modern religious art, to paint ''The Crucifixion'' (1946).<ref name=Crucifixion>{{cite web |author=Chris Stephens|url=http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sutherland-crucifixion-n05774/text-catalogue-entry|title=Catalogue entry, ''The Crucifixion'' 1946|date=March 1998|access-date=1 November 2016|work=[[Tate]]}}</ref> This was Sutherland's first major religious painting and his first large figure study.<ref name="JKing"/> ''The Crucifixion'' shows a pale Christ with broken limbs and was followed by a series of paintings that combined abstract forms from nature, usually the spikes and points of thorns, with religious iconography.<ref name="JKing"/> A subsequent series, ''Origins of the Land'', developed this approach, showing combinations of rocks and fossils in increasingly complex and abstract designs.<ref name="JKing"/>

In 1946, Sutherland had his first exhibition in New York. That same year, he also taught painting at Goldsmiths' School of Art. From 1947 into the 1960s, his work was inspired by the landscape of the [[French Riviera]], and he spent several months there each year. Eventually, in 1955, he purchased the villa Tempe à Pailla, designed by the Irish architect [[Eileen Gray]], at [[Menton]], near the French-Italian border.