Notes

Having had training as an architectural draughtsman, and having famously recorded the construction of the Union Buildings on Meintjeskop, it comes as little surprise that Henk Pierneef took interest in the splendid stoep and pergola of Sir Herbert Baker’s Villa Arcadia in Johannesburg. Perched on the Parktown Ridge facing north, protected from the mine-dust clouds nearby, and replacing a smaller Swiss-style building, the house was completed in 1909 for the influential Randlord couple, Sir Lionel and Lady Phillips.

The particular circumstances around Pierneef’s visit to the Villa early in January 1918 are unclear, but one can imagine the young artist in high spirits at the time: he had resigned from his post at the State Library late in the previous December, and had committed to join the Transvaal Education Department in the upcoming February. He would be obliged to teach only eight hours per week – on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays – so he could look forward to far greater freedom to paint.

Pierneef would have set himself up on Baker’s so-called ‘breakfast stoep’, facing east, with the servery and pantry to his right. The architect’s favoured barley-sugar chimneys are out of sight, but Pierneef noted the green shutters on the first-floor façade and the sprawling bougainvillea canopy of the pergola, which he flecked expressively with strokes of crimson and magenta. What light that made it through the leaves and flowers settled in bright golden patches on the floor, walls and columns.

After purchasing Vergelegen in 1917, and renovating the historic homestead, the Phillipses left Villa Arcadia in 1922. It was bought then by the South African Jewish Orphanage, and housed thousands of children over the years until 2002. Today, more than a century after Pierneef executed his drawing, Villa Arcadia forms part of Hollard’s headquarters, and is filled with modern and contemporary South African art.