Described as the true matriarch of south african

Described as the “true matriarch of South African female
artists”, she was said to have spent time in 1961 with Gil-
lian Ayres, now a Royal Academician, but in The Times
article Ayres denied knowing her. In 1954, she was said
to have met artist Jan Vermeiren. But again, as the Times
pointed out, he would only have been six at the time.
Trying to discover who Helen Anne Petrie (1932 –2006)
was requires a visit to the coastal town of Fish Hoek about “She

did not have a very happy life – living with a brother
30 kilometres from Cape Town. with
that illness was incredibly stressful,” said a friend who
It is described in the online listings for Petrie as the equiva- knew
Petrie from the 1950s through to her death.
lent of the exclusive US seaside resort of The Hamptons,
Although her internet biography lists her work in esteemed
but this is a wild exaggeration.
private collections and as having been exhibited in Eu-
rope
and the US between 1960 and 1994, none of those
interviewed recall Petrie ever having travelled or exhib-
ited
internationally during this time, or having spoken of
these
achievements.
Petrie first shows up on the Fish Hoek scene in the 1950s.
A
friend still living in Fish Hoek said she had met Petrie
when
they worked at the Fish Hoek municipality together
between 1956 and 1959.
At
that time Petrie was doing secretarial work for the mu- Abstract artist
and Fish Hoek resident Betty Salmon, 85,
nicipality, but the friend said she had studied art at the who counts
herself as the longest living member of the
Johannesburg Technical College before moving to Cape society,
remembered Petrie as an “extremely shy” person.
Town.
“I always liked her work. I rated her as good,” said Salm-
on, who said she had no knowledge of Petrie exhibiting
outside of Fish Hoek.
Why Petrie never showed up in the records of the Fish
Petrie’s “Summer House” in Fish Hook hardly the same to “(The “Hamptons”
Hoek Art Society after 1976 might have had something to
equivalent in USA)” as quoted in Strutt’s CV
do with the death of her parents.
Even in the 1950s, when the first signs of Petrie show up
It’s not clear from interviews when they died, but by the
in Fish Hoek society, it was a commuter town, housing
time domestic worker Anne Watson, now 76, began work-
people that travelled to Cape Town on the train or who
ing for the Petrie’s once a week on a Thursday in the late
worked in the docks in nearby Simon’s Town.
70s, she said the parents were already dead.
There were a number of holiday cottages and hotels, but
Watson remembers Petrie’s painting because three of
it was not a resort exclusively for the very rich.
her daughters posed for her and were given the resulting
These days it is a sprawling commuter and retirement sub-
portraits.
urb wedged into a valley fronted by a beautiful beach
and a not-so beautiful strip of shops with their backs
Initially, she remembers friends visiting and although she

turned to the sea.