Eagle, a study for Coventry Cathedral

In 1952 Graham Sutherland was commissioned to design a tapestry to hang behind the altar at Coventry Cathedral. Directed by the architect of the Cathedral, Basil Spence, and the leading church authorities, Sutherland was instructed to design a work of art which would speak to the ordinary person and would be traditional enough for the practitioners to comprehend. The brief was to depict Christ in the Tetramorph, with the marks of his suffering made visible and should feature the four themes: the Glory of the Father, Christ in the Glory of the Father, the Holy Spirit and the church, which were to be represented by symbols of the apostles and the Heavenly Sphere pictured by angels or saints. Sutherland looked to the Egyptian sculptures and the Romanesque and early Gothic Cathedrals in France for inspiration, whilst also paying homage to the depiction of Christ Pantocrator in the Greek Orthodox Church. For the four evangelists Sutherland made studies of eagles and lions, drawn from the birds and animals he saw in Maidstone Zoo, of which the present lot is an example.

Woven in France by the Pinton Fréres in Felletin near Aubusson, the tapestry took ten years to complete and was hung in Coventry Cathedral in March 1962.