Modern, Post-War and Contemporary Art

Live Virtual Auction, 17 - 18 May 2021

Modern, Post-War and Contemporary Art

Sold for

ZAR 34 140
Lot 4
  • Maud Sumner; Battersea Bridge over the Thames
  • Maud Sumner; Battersea Bridge over the Thames
  • Maud Sumner; Battersea Bridge over the Thames
  • Maud Sumner; Battersea Bridge over the Thames


Lot Estimate
ZAR 25 000 - 35 000
Selling Price
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
ZAR 34 140

About this Item

South African 1902-1985
Battersea Bridge over the Thames

signed

watercolour on artist's board
50 by 60cm excluding frame; 87 by 99 by 6,5cm including frame

Notes

Maud Sumner lived her life between South Africa, England and France. She spent the years of World War II ‘at home’ in South Africa, and when she returned to her studio in Paris in 1947, she noticed that the work of her contemporary artists had undergone a distinct change during her absence. There was a new widespread preoccupation with abstraction and the importance of colour was paramount. Sumner’s work also underwent a significant transformation – the Bonnard and Vuillard influenced intimiste domestic interiors and women in picture hats, so characteristic of her work in the 1930s, were a thing of the past. Sumner’s paintings from the 1950s onwards show a move to far greater abstraction although she never loses touch with representation entirely. The cherry reds and grey blues she favoured in earlier decades remain, but they are used increasingly as sharply defined facets of colour that construct form by means of a network of shapes across the picture plane. River bridges on both the Thames in London and the Seine in Paris were a favoured subject over many years as they provided the opportunity for this form of pictorial exploration. In lots 3 and 4, Sumner demonstrates her skill as a master watercolourist with an exceptional economy of means. The white of the paper becomes the reflective shimmer of the water’s surface, and the graceful arches of Battersea Bridge and the bulky forms of tethered barges and industrial buildings on the riverbank, create believable form and receding space using blocks of colour and contrasts of light and shadow.

View all Maud Sumner lots for sale in this auction


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