[1] She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Sutherland, and his only surviving child.
[2] After her marriage failed, Sutherland began to collect art.
[1] Through Michael Roberts and his wife Janet Adam Smith, the poet Kathleen Raine was introduced to Sutherland, who fostered her two children with Charles Madge during World War II.
[5][6] Sutherland was one of Piet Mondrian's early English supporters, buying a picture by 1938.
[7] From 1939 she lived at Cockley Moor, near Dockray, Penrith, now in Cumbria, in a house redesigned by Leslie Martin in Modernist style.