Notes

Newly independent, out from his father’s shadow, and with three successful Cape Town shows recently behind him, a young and roguish Gregoire travelled to London in February 1935. Having known poverty at home as a young man, and having developed his ability through discipline rather than formal training, his experience of Europe, and his time at the Heatherley Art School and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, were life-changing and style-questioning.

Gregoire produced a fantastic but small group of pictures based on a visit to Cornwall in 1935 and, no doubt, inspired by the off-kilter, naïve paintings by Christopher Wood and Alfred Wallis. The present lot, with its playfully corrupted perspective, its patches of pure colour, and its folksy figurines, is a wonderful and rare example. Comparing it to Evening, Cape Town Harbour (Strauss & Co, 27 July 2020, lot 454), painted just two years prior, is particularly revealing: the artist’s willingness to experiment is clear, as is the remarkable ease with which he had assimilated a Eurocentric and gentle avant-gardism.

Provenance

Strauss & Co, Cape Town, 11 October 2010, lot 209.