Notes

Small in scale but big in impact, Kameelberg naby Johan Albrechts Hoogte, SWA (Lot 18) and Hartbeeshuisie (Lot 19) come from a golden period in Pierneef’s career that was inspired by two trips to the then South West Africa in 1923 and 1924. The young artist had been encouraged to visit the country by the German-trained artist Hans Aschenborn, as well as the judge-poet Toon van den Heever, who he had met while exhibiting in Stellenbosch in 1921. Pierneef arrived in Windhoek late in April 1923 and was moved by the surrounding landscape: the astonishing vastness, the still air, and ‘the peculiar translucent quality of the light’.¹ He travelled the country extensively, worked breathlessly, and produced enough pictures over an eight-week period to mount a sell-out exhibition in Windhoek that opened on 20 June 1923. While the catalogue for this show has not yet come to light – if one was produced at all – the paintings were characterised by their rich, dramatic, dusky pinks, their recognisable landmarks, and their small scale (his travelling painter’s box could only accommodate small boards). While one might never know whether Kameelberg naby Johan Albrechts Hoogte, SWA appeared on this first exhibition, it would certainly not have been out of place: the sky is infinite, empty and cerulean; the low winter grass beautifully crosshatched; and the Kameelberge, far in the distance, painted with purple at their base and pink on their sun-facing slopes. Pierneef returned to South West Africa a year after his first visit. In the interim, he had formally separated from his first wife Agatha, had sent work for the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, had carried out a long-term commission for a Mr Johan Schoeman to paint pictures of the Hartbeespoort Dam properties that he had for sale, and had begun to court a young Hollander called May Schoep (who he would convince to join him in South West Africa, and who he would later marry on 18 November 1924). One can only guess at the month in 1924 in which he painted Hartbeeshuisie, and indeed the place, but it is the kind of picture in which critics of the time recognised a deliberate attempt at founding a particular South African School of painting: it captured a unique, local light, and gave prominence to the country’s vernacular architecture.

1. The artist, quoted by Anton Hendriks in Ons Kuns (no date).