“As a person I am South African and English, but as a painter I am French.” – Maud Sumner

South African artist Maud Sumner once commented; “as a person I am South African and English, but as a painter I am French” (Berman, E. 1983:444). Born in Johannesburg in 1902, Maud Sumner began what was to become a highly academic and studious career, showing an immense interest in art throughout her earlier school days.

For her family’s reassurance she chose to do a Masters degree in English Literature, which she completed at Oxford University in England and thus begun her extensive studies abroad and never really settled for long in South Africa again. Following this in 1925 Sumner attended the Westminster school of Art and then, feeling a limitation in the London art environment, left for Paris and after a short stint at sculpture, devoted herself to painting, the medium that she developed throughout her artistic career and is now known for.

Post-impressionists in Paris had a massive bearing on her approach to art-making that remained throughout her career. It was initially the Intimists’ approach to composition and subject matter that captivated Sumner and she felt an easy appreciation for the favoured interior, domestic scenes that created, as their name suggests, an intimate focus to this subject.

The differences of the foreign landscapes of Europe also stimulated her in her compositions, which she enthusiastically delved into. It was, however, the Post-Impressionist movement in Paris that had the most bearing on Sumner, who embraced the formal qualities and the style which set the foundations of her approach to art. Over a short amount of time her subject delieantion became broader and more simplified, the colours became toned down and more focus was given to the formality of composition.

Her development was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, when she returned to South Africa for its duration. Sumner continued to apply a European approach to art to a South African landscape and theme, her work being well received in South Africa. She continued to be active throughout her life both locally and internationally and gained recognition for her great merits in both hemispheres of the world.

When she returned to Europe between 1947 and 1953, she lived in both Paris and London which induced a major adjustment to her painting style. Sumner’s new approach favoured highly geometric and semi-abstract investigations which used intensified colours, replacing the earlier subtle paleness with a vibrancy that animated her paintings with innovation and freshness.

Sumner’s colours did soften again following a trip to Israel in 1953, where the landscape’s hot and bleached tones perhaps altered her view. From then on she no longer so adamantly applied a ‘French’ way of looking at other spaces such as South Africa or the Middle East. The Israeli environment had a definite effect on her work, inspiring a period of religious themed paintings and consequently was commissioned to do several works for churches, including stained glass windows for several places of worship in both Europe and Africa.

After several trips taken around Africa in 1965, space and silence, already a predominant theme in her works, became the central aspect to her compositions. From this time arthritis in her hands was becoming an infliction that she sought to overcome, never relinquishing her dedication to her painting. In 1978 Sumner suffered a stroke while staying in Paris and was forced to return to South Africa, where she continued to paint but never again traveled.

Her works never used the thick impasto and loosely undefined brushwork associated with Expressionism, the formalist qualities of Post-Impressionism was a constant focus throughout Sumner’s life, which exhibited a controlled and proficient use of medium. Her use of colour was ever-evolving, imparting a luminosity though heat and dryness and through gradients of emotion which are indefinable but prevalent when viewing her compositions. The evocative nature of Sumner’s paintings, ranging across her still lifes, figure studies and landscapes, illustrates a distinction from other South African paintings in her unique and accomplished style in terms of originality, subtlety and the sense of imbued emotion that is an ever present quality in her paintings.