“Leon did not collect the obvious,” says Strauss & Co chairperson, Frank Kilbourn of Professor Leon Strydom, well-known literary scholar, award-winning poet and art collector, who passed away from Covid-19 related complications earlier this year.
Leon was an academic and scholar with a love of books, music, and the finer things in life, and his collection documents a well-read life, filled with connoisseurship, and includes rare handmade furniture, lush oriental carpets, an expansive library of South African art publications, and artworks from South African masters such as Alexis Preller, Maggie Laubser, Irma Stern and Edoardo Villa.
Alexis Preller
Herdboy (Boy with a Flute)
Signed and dated 62
Oil on canvas
60 by 52cm
R 1 500 000 – 2 000 000
Important high-value lots include a European lake landscape by Laubser and a portrait by Irma Stern, as well as two peak-period canvases by Preller and Stanley Pinker that appear at the front and the back of the auction catalogue.
Preller’s Herdboy (also known as Boy with a Flute, estimate R1.5 – 2 million), dated 1962, is the highest-value individual lot on the sale. This stylized portrayal of a young man is most likely one of two works of the same title that appeared on the artist’s much-anticipated exhibition at the Pieter Wenning Gallery in Johannesburg in 1962, following a period of retreat when the artist was working on a large public commission. The collection is also strong in sculptural works, with pieces in bronze and wood by Norman Catherine, Edoardo Villa, Gerard de Leeuw and Gavin Younge. The Strydom Collection is a real collector’s collection.
Irma Stern
Madeira Portrait
signed and date 1931
gouache on paper
48 by 38cm
R 300 000 – 500 000
In the lead up to Art Month at Welgemeend, an annual Cape Town arts festival that kicks off on 14 August, Strauss & Co will present the preview of The Professor Leon Strydom Collection and Sixty Years of Collecting Linn Ware – The David Hall Collection, in the manor house at Welgemeend, in Gardens, Cape Town.
The preview will run from 2 to 8 August 2021.
The auction will be live-streamed through Strauss & Co’s website at www.straussart.co.za, on Tuesday, 10 August 2021. Details: 021 683 6560 or ct@straussart.co.za
Gerard de Leeuw
Die Siek Kalfie/The Sick Calf
signed and dated 77
bronze on a wooden base
height: 47cm excluding base, 49cm including base
R 150 000 – 200 000
Edoardo Villa
Blue and Green Figural Forms
signed and dated 2007
welded and painted steel
214 by 131 by 70cm
R 200 000 – 300 000
Sydney Kumalo
The Whistle-Man
signed and numbered 4/7
bronze, on a wooden base
height: 89,5cm excluding base, 92cm including base; width: 35cm; depth: 24cm
R 100 000 – 150 000
Dorothy Kay
Salt
signed; inscribed ‘Philip’s Collection’ on the reverse.
oil on canvas
73 by 85,5cm
R 100 000 – 150 000
Robert Hodgins
A Widow and her Son
signed, dated 2002
45 by 45cm excluding frame
R 120 000 – 160 000
Stanley Pinker
JOKO
signed
mixed media on canvas and board
133 by 92,5 by 4cm
R 400 000 – 600 000
