Notes

Pierneef’s favourite subject matter, the bushveld and its trees, brilliantly exemplified in these two remarkable landscapes, also happens to be the theme of an exhibition held by him at the Lidchi art gallery in Johannesburg in August 1942. The paintings on that exhibition, composed mainly of an interesting array of his characteristic thorn trees, were described as ‘Patriarchs of the Bushveld’.¹ The present two lots are pictures one could walk into and explore; they are the bushveld. ‘He is teaching us to see, understand and appreciate the rolling miles of veld with the blue mountains in the distance, the strange almost fantastic trees that dot the landscape and the innumerable beauties of our land’ said Justice Minister Tielman Roos at the opening of one of Pierneef’s exhibitions.² The imposing thorn trees, the billowing cumulus clouds and soft mountain ranges take their place in each of these two landscapes as if by preordained design. Pierneef’s organising genius has grasped the landscape so thoroughly that the inner pattern of each of these two landscapes has emerged. ‘Bury me under a camelthorn tree’, he once said, ‘with its straight, manly character guarding me and its roots deep in the soil of Africa.³ Pierneef was passionate about the bushveld and took every possible opportunity to trek into the veld to study the landscape and make quick sketches and drawings of trees, mountains, and clouds, which he would later manipulate in his studio when composing his characteristic, and quite impressive landscapes. A Pierneef landscape thus is a representation of the land which is no longer tied to time or place. It has been elevated to a symbol of the intrigue of the bushveld. ‘What is a landscape?’, Pierneef once asked. ‘Is it the rough upper surface of the earth or the effect of its internal construction? What is a tree? Is it a colourful play of sparks of light between moving roofs of leaves or is it an organic form of life given expression in the balance of its branches and trunk?’⁴ Pierneef amply answers his own questions in these two brilliant landscapes.

1. PJ Nel (ed) (1990) JH Pierneef: His life and his Work. Cape Town: Perskor,
page 94.
2. Ibid, page 70.
3. Ibid, page 109.
4. Ibid, page 156.