Notes

Thanks to Gerard de Kamper for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.

When Maud Sumner returned to Europe after waiting out World War II in South Africa, she noticed that the work of École de Paris artists had undergone a significant shift towards abstraction, in parallel with American Abstract Expressionism. Colour and surface became increasingly important and Sumner’s paintings from the 1950s onwards are similarly more abstract. She produced a hauntingly beautiful series of views of Thames River bridges, using contrasts of light and shadow and the simplified geometry of arching bridge spans, tethered barges and blocky industrial structures lining the banks to construct a sense of depth and atmosphere with an enviable economy of means.