Jentsch oils for sale

ARTIST’S WORKS ARE ESTEEMED BY COLLECTORS

Namibian paintings from the late Peter and Regina Strack collection are poised to go under the hammer in South Africa Strauss & Co presents 20 works in various media.

The sale, which includes three rare Adolph Jentsch oils and a major Fritz Krampe oil, will be offered in a dedicated segment at the auction house’s sale in Cape Town on October 15.

German-born Peter Strack immigrated to Namibia in 1950 and was a partner in the architectural firm Stauch & Partners.

He began honing his skills as an artist and collector under the tutelage of painter Adolph Jentsch.

The collection he assembled with his wife, Regina, is striking for its focus on earlier 20th-century Namibian artists, such as Jentsch and Krampe, also Axel Eriksson and Carl Ossmann.

Dresden-born Jentsch, who moved to Namibia in 1938, is a key figure in the art history of his adopted country.

His masterful landscapes are imbued with a spiritual calm.

Jentsch’s work has been a fixture of South African auctions. In November 2017, Strauss & Co sold an oil on canvas from 1940, painted near the Swakop River, for R1.6 million.

Collectors esteem Jentsch’s oils, in part due to their rarity.

In 1975, a disastrous fire at a farm owned by Gebhard and Dorothee von Funcke, where the artist stored many of his prized works, destroyed much of his output, which the artist only reluctantly traded.

The Strack collection includes three oils, one of them, Schafrevier (estimate at R500 000 to R700 000), bequeathed by Dorothee von Funcke to the Stracks.

Painted in Jentsch’s muted colour palette, the work depicts the Schaf River near Windhoek.

The sale of the Strack Collection (lots 514 to 533) will take place on Monday, October 15 at 7pm at the Vineyard Hotel, Cape Town.

For more information, email bina@straussart.co.za