Lot 164: Le Roux Smith Le Roux SOUTH AFRICAN 1914-1963 - Four Ndebele Women

Le Roux Smith Le Roux
SOUTH AFRICAN 1914-1963
Four Ndebele Women
signed
oil on canvas
125,5 by 100cm

In 1935, Le Roux Smith Le Roux, a Michaelis art student, was selected alongside Eleanor Esmonde-White to produce a large-scale mural, in pure
egg tempera, on the upper floor of South Africa House in London. After training in the technique under William Rothenstein at the Royal College
of Art, and making scouting trips to study quattrocento examples, the two completed the so-called Zulu Room, a panoramic, stylised and
ambitious interpretation of the tribe’s ceremony, landscape, tradition and mythology. Le Roux’s linear style, with its flat, strong colour
combinations – all on show in the present lot – was well-suited to mural decoration, and certainly conjured the work of his more famous
contemporary, Diego Riviera.