Jane Tully Heath
Flowers in a Vase
About the SessionSpanning 4 centuries of global art history, The International Sale, presents 127 exceptional lots by artists from 27 countries across five continents. The auction highlights masterworks ranging from 17th century European paintings to post-2000 editions by contemporary artist's such as Mr Brainwash (lot 51), Jim Dine (lots 83-86), Isaac Julien (lot 108), Jeff Koons (45), and Lucas Samaras (lot 107 and 110). The sale is anchored by important pieces from Georg Baselitz, Erik Laubscher, Shirin Neshat, and a newly repatriated 1935 portrait by Irma Stern.
The auction's diversity is driven by rare museum-quality highlights, led by Irma Stern's Two Women (lot 31), which returns to South Africa after decades in a Berlin private collection. It is joined by Erik Laubscher's rare recto-verso painting Young Family / Construction (lot 48), an Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat photographic portrait linked to her award-winning Turbulent installation (lot 66), and a uniquely hand-coloured linocut by German master Georg Baselitz titled Das Pferd, Im Wald und auf der Heide Series (The Horse, in the Forest and on the Heath Series) (lot 72).
LOT 100
Jane Tully Heath
Flowers in a Vase
About this Item
signed and dated '89
Notes
Jane Tully Heath trained at the Birmingham College of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art, London, as did her husband, Jack, before immigrating to South Africa in 1946. Owing to their training, particularly in London, both artists forged their styles in the wider circle of the great British Modernists, Sir Stanley Spencer and Paul and John Nash. While her art remained ever-rooted in this British, vanguard tradition, the work she later produced in South Africa was based on careful observation and meticulous design, concerned more with decorative, ‘pictorial poetry’ than theory for theory’s sake.
An influential teacher at the Pietermaritzburg Technical College, and Fine Art lecturer at the Pietermaritzburg campus of the University of Natal from the early 1950s, Heath produced a large body of work in a wide range of media and, while never seeking the spotlight, exhibited successfully around the country. Her plein-air watercolour studies reveal a comfort in the medium and a seemingly effortless if decisive use of line.
More from The International Sale
