Notes

The Tesselaarsdal period is considered formative in Peter Clarke’s artistic development, with visits starting in 1949, when he still worked in the docks in Simon's Town, and continuing almost annually, often on extended stays of up to three months. In around 1957, he decided to give up his job in the docks and dedicate his life to art.

In Clarke’s approach to the rural farmland landscapes one notices 'a distinctly modernist agenda' with the pastoral views from Tesselaarsdal 'representing the new challenges presented by the less formal qualities of a rural landscape in contrast to the more complex perspectives of man-made urban views with their demanding geometry'.¹ At the same time, the 'powerful graphic sensibility' evident in his paintings began to be to explored in an extensive variety of printmaking processes, culminating in his time at Michaelis School of Fine Art with lecturer Katrine Harries from October 1961.²

The present lot, executed towards the end of 1959, shows Clarke experimenting with a style reminiscent of Cézanne and the 'bold contours and tipped up planes' of the Post-Impressionist landscapes are quite unlike the 'Impressionistic naturalism of his earlier studies'.³ Clarke chooses to play with distance, and strip the details down to their bare essentials. Using pointillist brushwork to give his planes texture, the cows are anchored in the fields by a thin, delicately painted grey shadow. The clouds float whimsically away across a monumental sky, balancing the pictorial slope of the hills down to the left.      

1. Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin (2011) Listening to Distant Thunder: The Art of Peter Clarke, Johannesburg: Standard Bank, page 58.

2. Ibid, page 72.