A pair of rare Walter Oltmann pencil drawings were uncovered during Strauss & Co’s valuation session at the Tatham Art Gallery on Monday.
Dating to the early 1980s, the works, titled Garden Chairs 1 and Garden Chairs 2, were brought to the gallery by a private collector.
Fine art specialist Dr Alastair Meredith said it was “rare to come across an early formative pencil work by Oltmann”.
“When you look at the intricacy and delicacy of the pencil work and the fastidious accuracy in these drawings, you get a sense of his later work, the wire works for which he is best known.”
Meredith said it was hard to know exactly what the two drawings would sell for on auction, but a recent work by Oltmann, sold three weeks ago, made just under R200 000.
A graduate of the School of Fine Art on the Pietermaritzburg campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Oltmann’s former lecturers include Maritzburg artist Jinny Heath, while one of his contemporaries is Fee Halsted, founder of Ardmore Ceramic Art. Read more