Strauss & co - 8 - 11 November 2020

177 387 Walter Battiss SOUTH AFRICAN 1906-1982 Karoo Night signed; inscribed with the title in pencil on the stretcher oil on canvas 39 by 34cm R200 000 - 300 000 PROVENANCE Strauss & Co, Cape Town, 21 October 2013, lot 728. Tasso Foundation Collection. Walter Battiss was a child of the Karoo. Born in Somerset East, on the eastern edge of this vast semi-desert, his family relocated to Koffiefontein in the Upper Karoo when the economic fallout of WW1 abruptly ended trade at his family’s private hotel. Battiss and his brother, Alfred, were sent ahead to an uncle’s farm. When his father secured a job as a bookkeeper in Koffiefontein, Battiss relocated to town. The young Battiss thought the mining town ugly. He nonetheless found consolation in the Riet River. In his book Limpopo (1965) Battiss recalls: ‘It was a paradise of pleasures: swimming, fishing, boating, bird-nesting, hunting, boyish adventures, and dangers of every kind.’ 1 This joyous and characteristically sybaritic work evokes these youthful indulgences. Notwithstanding its vertical format, Battiss is able to conjure the wide-scale panorama of the Karoo with his horizontal brushstrokes. The green- brown sky with its sickle moon is also faithful to his description of a Karoo moon ‘floating in jasper sun-dust’. 2 1. Walter Battiss (1965) Limpopo , Pretoria: Van Schaik, page 10. 2.  Ibid ., page 9. 386 Walter Battiss SOUTH AFRICAN 1906-1982 Orgy signed and dated 19.9.81 white ink on black paper 33,5 by 50cm R20 000 - 30 000 PROVENANCE Strauss & Co, Cape Town, 21 October 2013, lot 653. Tasso Foundation Collection. THE TASSO FOUNDATION COLLECTION OF IMPORTANT SOUTH AFRICAN ART ASSEMBLED BY THE LATE GIULIO BERTRAND OF MORGENSTER