Strauss & co - 16 October 2017, Cape Town

306 606 Maurice van Essche SOUTH AFRICAN 1906-1977 Women and Children in a Landscape signed oil on board 79,5 by 98,5cm R  –   Antwerp-born Maurice van Essche studied at the Brussels Academy of Fine Art under James Ensor, an influential proto-expressionist, and later in France under Henri Matisse. Van Essche travelled to the Belgian Congo on a government-sponsored trip in 1939. As hostilities ramped up in Europe he opted to settle in South Africa, arriving in Cape Town in 1940. He quickly became integrated into the local art scene. Van Essche’s new home unavoidably foisted changes on the 34-year-old painter, who became a member of the New Group. His most consistent subject matter was the human figure, initially Congolese but later South African, which he expressed both in formal portraits and stylised landscape studies. Esmé Berman notes that being neither realist nor expressionist his methods differed “quite considerably” from other South African painters: “The dual qualities of emotional humanism on the one hand and disciplined formalism on the other … lent aesthetic tension to his compositions.”1 While confronted with what 606