Artists

From Albert Adams to Portia Zvavahera, Strauss & Co maintains a detailed database of every artist sold at auction since 2009. Whether it is painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, ceramics or new media, this searchable database lists by artist every lot offered and provides aggregated data useful to collectors. Famous South African artists like William Kentridge, JH Pierneef, Alexis Preller and Irma Stern are introduced with helpful biographies along with the best contemporary artists.



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Maud Sumner

South African 1902-1985 


Sumner grew up between Ollerset, her childhood home in Booysens, Johannesburg, and Eathorpe, her father’s ancestral family estate in Warwickshire, England. She completed her schooling at Roedean in Johannesburg and, although she knew from an early age that she wanted to become an artist, she first completed a degree in English literature at Oxford University at her father’s insistence. Sumner spent a year at the Westminster School of Art in London, but finding the English art scene moribund, moved to Paris in 1926. She attended the Ateliers d’Art Sacré under studio masters George Desvallières and Maurice Denis and, from 1934, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. She returned to South Africa regularly in the interim, sometimes for a year at a time, to visit her family, paint, and exhibit her work, a pattern she repeated for most of her life, until ill health forced her to remain in Johannesburg from 1979. She first exhibited work at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1930 and 1931, and held her first solo show in Cape Town in 1932. She joined the New Group at Walter Battiss’s invitation in 1938.

Sumner’s early work reflects her interest in the work of Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, as well as other avant garde French artists of the École de Paris. She spent the war years in Johannesburg, and on returning to her studio in Paris in 1947, noticed a growing emphasis on abstraction and heightened colour in the city's art scene. Her work took a turn towards greater fragmentation, influenced by the work of her friend, the artist Paul Berçot, and the Rayonnist painters. The first of many visits to Namibia in 1965 heralded another shift in her work, and the ‘luminosity of space’ and ‘silence’ became dominant themes, with forms dissolving into light and colour.

Sumner was a devout Catholic and executed a number of designs for stained glass church windows and paintings on religious themes, including fourteen Stations of the Cross for St Mary’s cathedral in Cape Town in the 1960s.


465 lots offered      69.89% sold      ZAR 33 827 506
 

  Including Premium and VAT Results include Buyer's Premium and VAT
Maud Sumner; Through the Trees
9 Oct 2024
Sold for ZAR 25 795
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Maud Sumner; Still Life with Coffee Pot
17 Sep 2024
Sold for ZAR 175 875
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Maud Sumner; Bindon Abbey
16 Sep 2024
Starting at ZAR 20 000
Make an Offer
Maud Sumner; Interior with Pink Armchair
16 Sep 2024
Sold for ZAR 41 038
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Maud Sumner; Portrait of a Woman, recto; Building in a Forest, verso
9 Sep 2024
Sold for ZAR 9 967
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Maud Sumner; Male Nude Sketch
8 Jul 2024
Sold for ZAR 6 449
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Maud Sumner; Sainte Bernadette
8 Jul 2024
Sold for ZAR 37 520
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Maud Sumner; Seascape
25 Jun 2024
Starting at ZAR 200 000
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Maud Sumner; Standing Nude
10 Jun 2024
Sold for ZAR 3 518
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Maud Sumner; Cassandra
10 Jun 2024
Starting at ZAR 140 000
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Maud Sumner; The Thames at Battersea
10 Jun 2024
ZAR 20 000 - 30 000
 
Maud Sumner; The Thames
10 Jun 2024
ZAR 15 000 - 20 000
 

Results in green indicate post sales.