'At work at Westoe'
Provenienza : Purchased Cape Town, 1950s/60s. Thence by descent to current owner.
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Note : At work at Westoe depicts a lady sewing by an open window in the artist's historic 18th-century home 'Westoe' in West Mowbray, Cape Town. Freida Lock was an artist predominantly known for her studies of interiors and still-life, of which the present lot is an excellent example. She had recently returned from her eighteen month sojourn to Zanzibar in 1949, where she drew comparisons to her contemporary Irma Stern with her portraits of the Arab population. However her homecoming to South Africa was short lived. Westoe would be Lock's last home in South Africa before she emigrated to Portugal in 1952, and then London, where she died in poverty in 1962. The present lot stands out through Lock's distinctive use of dark, meandering outlines to delineate form, and her preference, as art historian Esmé Berman points out, for intense areas of pale grey, cream and oyster pink, and above all a fondness for "the chalky tone and texture obtained from zinc-white applied in thick impasto". In this instance, the pearlescent white of the chair legs in the centre of the room is heighted by the colourful hues of the yellow table and green fabric, adding an air of drama in an otherwise inoffensive domestic setting. Born in Cheadle Hume, England, Lock initially studied agriculture at Reading University at her parents' persuasion. Her studies were cut short when the family moved to Stellenbosch in 1921 to establish a fruit farm, where she assisted with cattle maintenance and fruit packing. However, Lock was determined to become an artist and finally, at the age of 30, she returned to England to take up art studies at the Heatherley School of Art. Notably, Heatherley was the first school to admit women and men on an equal footing. At Heatherley, Lock encountered the work of Cézanne, Van Gogh and Braque; it was also here that she met Terence McCaw and Gregoire Boonzaier, with whom she would co-found The New Group in 1938. The New Group consisted of a number of young, independent artists united in their desire to expose a conservative South African art world to European modernism. The group would later disband in 1953 after a few final tumultuous years. At work at Westoe is therefore one of the final works Lock completed before she left for Europe, and is a total combination of all the skills that she had developed; reflecting Berman's observation that 'there is no lack of personality in Freida Lock's painting', by this late stage in her career Lock's handling of colour was sure, and her figures drawn with unique vigour. A similar work, Interior: Woman Sewing, 1947, was included in the 'Exhibition of Contemporary South African Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture' at the Tate in London, 1948-9, and 'Transformations' at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in August 2010. Bibliography E. Berman, Art and Artists of South Africa, (Cape Town, 1983). E. Bedford, 'Freida Lock' in Our Art 4, (Pretoria, 1993).
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