Notes

Slender, needle-beaked egrets were an important motif for Alexis Preller, and after including one for the first time in his 1947 painting Basuto Allegory, the birds re-appeared in The Small White Bull, The Herd Boy, The Haycart, Sweet Bird of Youth, and even in the artist’s monumental Discovery mural for the former Transvaal Provincial Administration Building in Pretoria. Preller developed and maintained a deep interest in the African mystique, and he was well aware of the symbolic connection among certain African communities between the egret and their ancestral spirits. While the birds regularly took up a secondary position in his compositions, often punctuating the action, they were very much the focus of this painting. An ancestral presence is suggested as each elegant bird tilts its head expectantly heavenward.