Page 164 - Bulletin 8 2004

161

PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS OF KALK BAY
THE INSPIRATIONS AND WORK OF WYNNE QUAIL

Barrie Gasson

Formative years and influences

Ethelwynne May Quail, always known as Wynne, was born in Johannesburg on 17 October

1903. She was the only child of John and Adelaide Quail who had arrived in South Africa
from England in November 1902. (Fig. 4.1). Her father was a 27 year-old Manchester-

trained architect / quantity surveyor who had come to join Herbert Baker’s new

architectural practice in Johannesburg as his assistant. Soon afterwards he left Baker and
developed his own flourishing practice by doing the quantities on most of Baker’s new

buildings in the Transvaal, Free State, Natal and Southern Rhodesia.

Ada Quail, 26 years old, later on in the 1920s started her own practice in the field of

opthalmo-therapy. In this she was inspired by the work of Dr. W. H. Bates and his book,
published in 1920, Better Sight without Glasses, which taught ways of retaining and

improving eyesight through natural means.

At some time the family embraced the new philosophy of Theosophy, which presents itself

as the set of truths that underlie all religions. It developed into a cult during the first
decades of the twentieth century around the person of Krishnamurti, an Indian teenager

who was touted as the Coming World Teacher, and was nearly destroyed as a result of this.
One of Theosophy’s most prominent proponents for the greater part of the twentieth

century was Geoffrey Hodson, who forms an important part of this story.