Notes

Grey is very important in Adolph Jentsch’s paintings. Like Cézanne, he felt “that as long as one has not painted in grey, one is no painter”. In his nuances of grey Jentsch achieves space and distance, providing his pictures with harmonious perspective. “As the mathematician has the number as a means of measuring” he muses, so “the painter has grey as his standard of measurement, but the painter measures intuitively.”¹

Inspired by the extensive range of grey used by Chinese watercolourists, he observes that no other colour can achieve the same effect as grey which he describes as “singular” and “having a special stability.”²

Explaining his skillfull mix of grey with subtle proportions of other colours, Jentsch points out the colour’s atmospheric qualities saying “The air mass that lies between me and the object I see changes the colour of the object. It influences my vision looking through it. The air brings grey into the colour of every colour tone. It gives the effect of perspective.”³

1. Levinson, Olga, Adolph Jentsch, Human & Rousseau Publishers (Pty) Ltd., Cape Town, 1973, page 68.

2. ibid.

3. Levinson, Olga, Adolph Jentsch, Human & Rousseau Publishers (Pty) Ltd., Cape Town, 1973, page 71.

 

Provenance

Purchased from the artist's estate by Peter Strack in 1983.

The Late Peter and Regina Strack Collection.