Business Day Art - June 2004 Supplements

Below is the text as written for the Fair Vaue column by Harriet Hedley.

Buys turn out to be sizeable investments

FAIR Value has received several exciting submissions from readers wondering what their artworks are worth. Most of the submissions are of SA's older artists, including Maggie Laubser, Pranos Domsaitas and Titta Fasciotti. Many of the readers who wrote to us also had interesting stories surrounding the artworks and the artists under review. Let's take a closer look.
 
Bernard Lawrenson bought a Maggie Laubser painting along with one by Pranos Domsaitas at a Cecil Marks auction in Welkom late in 1971 or early in 1972. Lawrenson cannot remember what he paid for the works, but recalls that it was certainly more than he could afford at the time, probably about R700 to R800 for the pair.
 
Lawrenson knows little of the provenance of the Laubser painting. A possible clue is the name of a previous owner: one Myra Gunther with an address in Stellenbosch.
 
Johan van Rooyen, in his monograph on Maggie Laubser, mentions that in 1935 she had a protracted working holiday of nine months as a house guest of the Gunther family on the farm, Rooiwal, in the Standerton district. It maybe a coincidence.
 
There is a faded handwritten "Maggie Laubser, Strand" signature on the back of the painting. This signature matches one on a letter Lawrensori s wife received from Laubser in February 1972 in reply to a letter asking for some information about the picture.
 
Harriet Hedley, art consultant with Gilfillan Scott-Berning, who did the appraisal, says Laubsei s works were strongly influenced by the German expressionists whose search for expressiveness of style was by means of exaggerations and distortion of line and colour; a deliberate abandoning of the naturalism implicit in impressionism, in favour of a simplified style which was expected to carry far greater emotional impact Hedley says that in the more limited context of modern art, the expressionist movement may be said to have emerged from Vincent van Gogh's use of drastically simplified outline and very strong colour.
 
"This marvellous portrait encapsulates all this and is a strong image. Unfortunately we do not know who the sitter is, which very often can lend weight to a value. In our opinion, based on the images, we would expect this picture to fetch in the region of R60 000-R80 000 if sold at auction," Hedley says.
 
The work from Pranos Domsaitas of two young girls would fetch in the region of R10 000-R15 000 if sold at auction, says Hedley. "That's a wonderful investment for something which was bought for about 11800 in the 1970s," she points out.
 
This estimate has been provided from photographs sent via e-mail (digital images) and is subject to revision on physical inspection. Domsaitas was strongly influenced by the expressionists and especially George Rouault and Edvard Munch, whom he met. He painted religious scenes, rural scenes, still life and became very abstract towards the end of his life. He used all different media: oils, charcoal, pencil, crayon, pastel and watercolour.
 
Alan Gordine sent in a photograph of an original oil painting he had purchased from artist Titta Fasciotti while living in Kensington, Johannesburg in 1981.
 
The work measures about 35cm x 50cm and is painted on artist's board. In the bottom left corner is written: "GCALEKt1' and there is a signature bottom right: "Titta Fasciotd 81". On the reverse of the painting, Fasciotti pencilled in capitals: "GCALEKAS WOMEN (XHOSAS) TRANSKEI". The spelling on the front and reverse does differ slightly.
 
Fasciotti was born in Bergamo, Italy in 1927 and died in 1993. He lived in SA from 1948. He studied in Italy under Prof Achille Funi and in SA privately under WG Wiles. He painted landscapes, still life, seascapes and figures and worked in different media and participated in many group exhibitions in SA, Europe and the US. Hedley, who once again carried out the appraisal, says the work described above would fetch in the region of R4 000-R6 000 at auction.
 
Again; as the estimate has been provided from photographs sent via e-mail (digital images), it is subject to revision on physical inspection.

Julius Baumann