oil on canvas

Signature details: signed; inscribed 'Botswana No.16' in another hand on the stretcher and inscribed with the artist's name and titled 'Seascapes' on an Everard Read Gallery label on the reverse

(1)

101 x 81 cm; framed size: 126 x 106 x 2 cm

Provenance:

Everard Read, Johannesburg.

Private collection, Johannesburg.

Notes:

Maud Sumner was a deeply contemplative and poetic artist. Born in Johannesburg, she left in 1922 to complete a degree in English literature at Oxford. Thereafter she spent a short period at Westminster Art School before deciding that it was Paris, not London where she ought to be. Leaving for France in 1926, she attended the Ateliers d’Art Sacré and, from 1934, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

In her early years, Sumner identified wholeheartedly with Paris and French art, often painting domestic, interior scenes in the French Intimist tradition. Later, she shifted her focus away from the material world to the exterior landscape and Africa’s wide-open spaces and barren beauty. While characteristically undated Clouds and Shadows is a fine example of the atmospheric landscapes that define Sumner’s mature style.

In 1953, the artist made her first trip to the Holy Land, travelling from Johannesburg by aircraft. The experience of this flight gave Sumner a new perspective of the landscape and Albert Werth[1], author and a previous Director of the Pretoria Art Museum, notes that from 1954 we find her, “painting pictures of deserts, of distant views of vast tracts of land, of the sky, and the stratosphere; an exalted vision which remained with her until the end of her artistic career”.

The view of the clouds and the shadows they cast on the deserted landscape below is one only experienced from a great height. Sumner would often add small details to her vast landscapes – a telephone pole, a treetop, or the corner of a roof – but Clouds and Shadows is completely devoid of any intrusion.

While recognisable as a landscape, the painting essentially celebrates empty space and silence. Maud Sumner once said, “My pictures speak while remaining silent”[2]. Silence was important to the artist and while her early works portrayed contemplative interior scenes Clouds and Shadows is a beautiful example of private meditation. An introspective and profound work evoking a mood of serenity and reflection.

[1] Werth, A. (1992). Maud Sumner: An appreciation. In Harmsen, F. Maud Sumner: Painter and Poet. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik (Pty) Ltd. P. 5.

[2] Harmsen, F. (1992). Maud Sumner: Painter and Poet. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik (Pty) Ltd. P. 9.