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Helen Sutherland

English collector and patron of the arts

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ18528189
Source-derived summary

Helen Christian Sutherland (24 February 1881 – 29 April 1965), married name Helen Denman, was an English art patron and collector.

Life

She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Sutherland, and his only surviving child. She married Richard Denman in 1904; the marriage was annulled in 1913. They had separated in 1909; Denman married May Spencer in 1914.

After her marriage failed, Sutherland began to collect art. Initially she took guidance from Freddy Mayor of the Mayor Gallery. From the mid-1920s she collected mainly from a group of artist friends. In 1929 she took a lease on Rock Hall, Northumberland. She was an early patron of the Ashington Group.

David Jones met Sutherland through Jim Ede; Ben and Winifred Nicholson met her through the artist Constance Lane, in 1925.

Editorial summary

“Helen Sutherland” enters the record as english collector and patron of the arts. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Helen, Sutherland and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1881, 1965, 1904, 1913—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1881-01-17. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Helen, Sutherland and English.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Helen Sutherland” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Helen, Sutherland and English provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18528189. VIAF identifies the subject as 11798665. The Library of Congress control number is nb98042523. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1881, 1965, 1904 and 1913.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Helen Sutherland”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Helen Sutherland primary sources, Helen Sutherland archive and Helen research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Helen Sutherland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.