Inspiration from South Africa

Week Nine is Iron Oxide, Purple Grey, Yellow Ochre & Heather

For a late winter break we travelled to the Western Cape region of South Africa and are basing ourselves in False Bay, the Indian Ocean side of the Cape Peninsula. For me, this is an ideal place to recharge, take time to think up ideas and get inspired.

For this week’s post I wanted to feature a South African female artist and discovered one that is completely new to me - I really like her work as a multifaceted artist. Eleanor Esmonde-White (1914-2007) was born in Dundee in the British Colony of Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), South Africa. Her studies began in 1932 at the University of Natal, followed by a scholarship from the renowned colonial architect Sir Herbert Baker to the Royal College of Art in London and then the British School in Rome where she studied murals.

In 1938 she was commissioned, together with fellow student Le Roux Smith Le Roux, to create a mural in the new South Africa House building on Trafalgar Square, designed by Baker. The resulting artwork, People of Heaven, took four years to complete! It extended around all four walls of the room and depicted the customs, rites and ceremonies of the AmaZulu people.

Returning to South Africa, Esmonde-White joined the New Group, a progressive collective of South African artists founded by Gregoire Boonzaier, and began exhibiting work that challenged the conservative tastes of the day. In 1949 she took up a lecturing position at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, where she established the Department of Design and taught for over a decade. She was also carrying out major public commissions throughout this period: a mosaic for the Cape Province Library, a tapestry for the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town and murals for the Artscape Theatre among them.

Her work centred almost entirely on women - painting them at leisure, at work, in peasant communities and on beaches - with a warm palette of reds, oranges and pinks. Her heavily stylised figures have a quiet, humanist quality to them: timeless rather than dramatic. Primarily an oil painter, she also produced woodcuts and works on paper that are particularly sought after.

Esmonde-White went on to exhibit at the São Paulo Biennale twice — in 1957 and 1961 — and at the Venice Biennale in 1964, bringing South African art onto the international stage at a difficult time in history. Her work is held in the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town and in numerous important collections.

See current Esmonde-White works available at auction here, read about her Festival of Britain mural here and take a look at her published biography here.

“Two Figures in a Wooded Landscape”, oil on canvas, Eleanor Esmonde-White, date unknown

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Iron Oxide, Purple Grey, Yellow Ochre & Heather. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Why not share this post with them?

Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by the artwork which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish

W09 Shapes

437KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download