Perhaps best known as a painter, Sutherland began his career in his late teens as an etcher. His work was strongly influenced by the romantic, pastoral landscape etchings of the English artist, Samuel Palmer. Like Palmer, Sutherland drew with webbed, looping strokes, rather than with straight lines. The dark, mysterious wood, seen here in his work for the first time, was to become a constant theme in Sutherland’s later painting. In 1925, Sutherland’s work began to show an interest in light and here the setting sun is visible in the background, shedding its last rays into the scene. Sutherland stopped making etchings around 1931.