Notes

Maud Sumner described herself: “as a person, I am South African and English, but as a painter I am French.”¹ In 1926, she moved to Paris after beginning her artistic career a year earlier at the Westminster School of Art in London – prior to this, she earned a degree in Literature at Oxford University. In Paris, she immersed herself in the richness of colour and taste of the French art scene.² There she attended Ateliers d’Art Sacré and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and was influenced by Post-Impressionism and Intimism. Sumner returned to Johannesburg during the war years and exhibited with the New Group (after Walter Battiss’ 1938 invitation). She moved back to Paris after the war and her art turned towards fragmentation, as inspired by Abstractionism and the Rayonnist movement. In the 1960s, Sumner took the first of many trips to Namibia where she became interested in desert scenes. In these, she would paint the vast landscape with a softened colour palette and sense of emptiness and silence.³ In November of 1971, Sumner was awarded the Medal of Honour by the ‘Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns’. Throughout her career, Sumner travelled between South Africa, England, and France but settled in Johannesburg in 1979 due to ill health.

The collection of lots on this sale demonstrates the breadth of Sumner’s oeuvre. They range from intimate portraits, interior scenes, and still lives to vast urban, rural, and desert views. They form a wonderful cross-section of Sumner’s various interests and artistic abilities.

^1. Esmé Berman (1983) Art & Artists of South Africa, Cape Town: Balkema, page 444.
^2. Frieda Harmeson (1992) Maud Sumner: Painter and Poet, Pretoria: JL van Schaik, pages 16-20.
^3. Charles Eglington (1967) Maud Sumner, Johannesburg: Purnell and Sons SA.

Provenance

Dr Matthys Johannes Strydom Family Collection.