The bold, abstract paintings and vivid, unnatural colours were a shock to visitors. Londoners were not delighted by the possibility to see works by the group Fry designated as 'Post-Impressionists' following in the style of Édouard Manet: Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri Matisse.

In 1910, the painter, critic, and member of the Bloomsbury Group, Roger Fry staged an exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in London called 'Manet and the Post-Impressionists'. In the early twentieth century, modern art was not revered in Britain. Installation view of 'Truth and Beauty' at The Granary Gallery But, rather than frittering her money away on the temptations available to a single woman in 1920s London (dresses, balls, society gatherings), Sutherland retreated to an ascetic life of art collecting: she supported artists and writers, and filled her rural houses with paintings, drawings, and sculptures – many of which now make up the exhibition ' Truth and Beauty – The 20th Century British Art of pioneering art collector Helen Sutherland' at The Maltings in Berwick, Northumberland. She was married at the age of 23 to the politician Richard Denman, but initiated an annulment nine years later: the marriage had never been consummated.Īfter her mother Alice, Lady Sutherland died in 1920, and her father Sir Thomas Sutherland died in 1922, Sutherland came into a considerable fortune – her two brothers had died, and left her as the sole heiress. She grew up in the quiet countryside of Hampshire, and, after a spell at boarding school in Barnet, spent time at a convent in Paris. Born in 1881 into a stuffy, Victorian environment, Sutherland's early life was more fitting for an existence of religious contemplation than radical art collecting. By the time she moved to Northumberland's Rock Hall, Sutherland was something of an incongruous 'Abbess' of the modern art world.

British socialite 1910