Devastation City : Panorama of Ruin, 1941

This is one of a number of drawings Graham Sutherland made in response to the bombing of London during the Second World War. It was allocated to the London Museum by the War Artists Advisory Committee in the late-1940s.

Although Sutherland was an official War Artist from 1940 until 1944, he made his London drawings in 1941. They concentrate on the City and East End, and form some of the most haunting images of his war output. Previously, he had been making landscape paintings which, though rooted in observation, used distortion to evoke mood. He continued this approach with his war work, making on-the-spot sketches, then working them up into formal drawings back in his studio.

Sutherland has used colour and texture to prompt a direct response to the bombed buildings. For instance, the large areas of green, purple, grey and black - colours suggesting sickness and decay - help give this drawing a tense, uneasy atmosphere. And the artist has applied watercolour over wax crayon to create a scabby, damaged surface.

Of his experiences in the Blitz, Sutherland said later: 'In the City one didn’t think of the destruction of life. All the destroyed buildings were office buildings and people weren’t in them at night. But in the East End one did think of the hurt to people and there was every evidence of it.’