Notes

Malta Farm had its origins as one of the ‘Free Burgher’ allotments, granted in 1657, along the Liesbeeck river, a short distance from the Castle of Good Hope. The purpose of these allotments was agricultural; to provide crops for the Dutch East India Company to trade with passing ships. Pieter Wenning visited Cape Town in the winter of 1916, and on one of his daily outings searching for new compositions, he came across the historic Malta Farm in Observatory.
This charactered, historic building, comfortably nestled in the landscape, dating from the Cape’s distant past, must have resonated strongly with the Dutch-born artist’s compositional aesthetic because he made several paintings of it from differing vantage points over his career.
In this work, the artist renders the composition with a vivid chrome and emerald-green foreground, the buildings glowing in ochre, brown and russet hues, transposed against a turbulent winter skyline in a varied patchwork of blue tones. The composition is further augmented with calligraphic linear detailing, seen in the tracery of fencing, an outdoor staircase, and trees, further uniting this vibrant composition in Wenning’s expressive and naturalistic style.

Provenance

Graham's Fine Art, Johannesburg.

Private Collection.