Strauss & co - Review 2009

24 May Hillhouse S OUTH A FRICAN 1908-1989 World Record Still Life with a Teapot and Flowers on a Checked Tablecloth signed, dated 54 oil on canvas, 50 by 60 cm SOLD R189 380, OCTOBER 2009 Still life paintings by Maud Sumner and May Hillhouse have attracted favourable attention and competitive prices with the latter achieving a world record of R189 380 at Strauss & Co.’s inaugural Cape Town auction. The high price achieved for Sumner’s Flowers on a Table in Front of a Window (R445 600) is in large measure due to the delightful composition of light flooding an interior from an open, shuttered window, a subject favoured by many early twentieth-century French artists with whom Sumner had contact during her studies in Paris from 1926 to 1932. Inspired by her teacher, Maurice Denis, the leading theorist of the Nabi movement, her paintings share the thoughtful, sensitive and painterly qualities found in the works of the Intimists, Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard.