Notes

It should come as little surprise that City Skyline coincided with Larry Scully's move to Johannesburg. The canvas's shimmering light, its gleaming towers of colour, and it's visionary aesthetic evoked the ambitious, energetic and technology-charged spirit of the city in the late 1960s.

'He was plunged into daily contact with the hub-bub of Hillbrow and the frenzied animation of a developing metropolis', noted Esmé Berman in her entry for the artist in her landmark dictionary of Art & Artists of South Africa. 'Into the calm breadth of his painted vistas was interjected a pulsating rhythm,' she continued, 'the percussive syncopation of the city. He was fascinated particularly by the ambiguous night image of sparkling lights and shadowed finite forms of building reaching into the infinite darkness of the starlit sky.'

Esmé Berman. (1983) Art & Artists of South Africa: An illustrated biographical dictionary and historical survey of painters, sculptors and graphic artists since 1875, Cape Town: A.A. Balkema. Page 391.

Provenance

The Collection of the Late Estate Mr Chris (Tos) Du Toit.