Page 166 - Bulletin 8 2004

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Wynne grew up in a home in which all of these activities and influences were unfolding,
and in a town scarcely 20 years old. The home itself was in the new suburb of Bellvue East,

a few miles from the centre of Johannesburg on the northern side of the Berea ridge, and on
the edge of open veld. The home atmosphere would probably have been serious, studious,

creative, and strongly spiritual, and a nurturing environment for a person with artistic

talents. In 1937, during a return visit she penned a reflection on her early years there:

“As a child, on days of dull quiet after rain, I used to listen to the muffled throb
of the mines, and standing bare-footed in the wet grass pondered deep wisdom,
thinking it the sound of the world going round.”

Such thoughts may have been present in many young minds and in her case they point to a

curiosity about what lay behind the visible material world. It was a curiosity that remained

with her throughout her life and it had a profound influence on her sculpture and painting.

Around October 1918, when Wynne was 15 years old, John Quail took up a partnership in

the firm of Babbs & Labdon Quantity Surveyors, in Cape Town. The family moved directly
to St. James and stayed at the Seahurst Hotel before moving into a house at the end of

Mentone Road. It was shortly after their arrival that the great tragedy of her life occurred.
She and two other children staying at the hotel were stricken with a mysterious illness, from

which one died, one was crippled for life, and she was left with a permanently weakened
heart. It was thought to be polio or rheumatic fever but it now seems more likely to have

been the Spanish Flu which paralysed Cape Town at this time. The family faced some

major choices: quiet conditions were needed in which to restore her health, and she also
needed a place in which to develop her evidently prodigious artistic talents.

The first decision taken was to terminate her formal schooling at Rustenburg at the end of

1920 without her having completed standard 7. The second decision was to build a home in
which she would have her studio and live quietly. That home was built nearby, on land

between Sorrento and Mentone Roads, and was completed in 1922 and always called