Notes

Born in Gibraltar of a father who was serving in the British Army and a South African mother who told the young Scully many stories of the country of her birth, Larry Scully’s imagination teemed with images of a distant, exotic place at the tip of Africa. ‘I was always aware of South Africa’, he said, ‘and when we went to England in 1924, this became a vision of space, of great mystery and primitive vitality – in fact Africa’.1 When Scully was sixteen, the family moved to South Africa, but Larry, already aware of his exceptional drawing skills, had to put his art studies on hold because he enlisted to fight in the Second World War. He became quickly known for the numerous portraits he painted of his fellow officers and, after the War, he studied at the University of the Witwatersrand where he met Christo Coetzee, Cecil Skotnes and Gordon Vorster, a group that, together with Esmé Berman and Nel Erasmus, became known as the Wits Group. He travelled to the Maluti mountains in Lesotho, where the rugged stone beneath his feet and the towering weathered cliffs above him became a source of great inspiration. This was the Africa of his imagination. A window had been flung open. The present lot is a prime example of his new vision.

1 Barbara Parker & Georges Duby (1973) Larry Scully. Self-published catalogue, page 1.

Exhibited

The Association of Arts Gallery, Pretoria October 1966.

Literature

Artlook, Number 1, November 1966. Illustrated in black and white on page 12.
Barbara Parker & Georges Duby (1973) Larry Scully. Self-published catalogue. Illustrated in colour on page 8.