Notes

In 1986, two years after moving to Johannesburg to teach at Wits University, Penny Siopis won the inaugural Volkskas Atelier Award (now Absa L'Atelier Award). The prize included a lengthy stay at the Cité des Artes, a complex of artists’ studios in central Paris. This pastel drawing was created during her time there, building on her recent interest in the still-life genre as a means of engaging with both social and artistic themes.¹

Evolving from her earlier cake paintings of the early 1980s – which introduced her use of distorted perspective and impasto surface treatments – Siopis’s new history paintings depicted grand dining halls with tables overloaded with fruit, confections, flowers, statuettes, and other bric-a-brac from her studio. These works, of which Melancholia (1986) is the best-known example, functioned as allegories of excess.²

Visualising excess comes at a cost. Put off by the high price of oil paints in Paris, Siopis turned instead to drawing, using Sennelier soft pastels. Founded in 1887, this French brand is renowned for its high-quality pure pigments ground with a natural transparent binder.³

The change in material proved fruitful, resulting in softer, less haptic images that enabled her to evoke dreamlike scenes referencing observations from life in Paris. The classically rendered female figure, gazing at the Greek god Poseidon astride a horse, quotes sculptures and paintings studied from life at the Louvre. The quail resting on the emerald surface in front of the woman was purchased from a shop on Rue St. Antoine. This same quail also appears in the pastel and collage work Flesh and Blood (1986).

In 1987, Siopis exhibited a selection of her recent pastel drawings, similar to the present lot, at Goodman Gallery.

¹ Penny Siopis (2014) Time and Again, Johannesburg: Wits University Press, page 56.

² Ibid, page 59.

³ Interview with the artist, 4 March 2025.