Notes

A great admirer of Pierneef, HRH Princess Alice presented to the South African National Gallery in 1931 a major painting by the artist entitled N’Tabeni, which he had painted in the previous year – the same year as he executed this painting.

Stephan Welz, in his book, Art at Auction, describes how he came to auction her South African collection:
Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, last survivor of Queen Victoria’s thirty-seven grandchildren, died on 3 January 1981 aged 97. She was the daughter of Queen Victoria’s youngest son, Prince Leopold, and Princess Helena, a sister of Queen Emma of the Netherlands. In 1904, she married the Earl of Athlone, brother of Queen Mary. The Earl of Athlone was born in 1874 in Kensington Palace, son of the Duke of Teck. He entered the army and served in the Matabele rebellion of 1896 and also in the Anglo-Boer War (1899 – 1902). In 1923 he was appointed Governor-General of the Union of South Africa, a position which he held until 1931. Princess Alice made nursing and the welfare of needy children her particular concern, and in South Africa institutions such as the Princess Alice Orthopaedic Hospital in Cape Town, the Princess Alice Adoption Home and the Athlone Boys’ High School in Johannesburg indicate the great role that she played in this regard. She was also the leading patron of the arts in South Africa. When she left South Africa she took with her a fine collection of South African paintings and sculpture. Many of the paintings later hung in the Athlones’ drawing room in Kensington Palace. On her death in 1981 it was arranged, through Sotheby’s in London, for her South African paintings and sculpture to be sold in Johannesburg.

The sale held on 1 July 1981 included ten lots of Africana prints, two bronze sculptures by Anton van Wouw, four Pierneef landscapes and twelve paintings by Robert Gwelo Goodman. The final result was beyond all expectations. Prices paid were three times or more the pre-sale estimate and new auction price records were established for all three artists.¹
1. Stephan Welz, Art at Auction in South Africa, Ad Donker, Johannesburg, 1989, page 19.

Provenance

HRH Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone

Sold: Christie's, London, 20 May 1997, lot 76, with the title South West African Landscape

Literature

JFW Grosskopf, Hendrik Pierneef, Die Man en sy Werk, van Schaik, Pretoria, 1945, illustration number 53 with the title Aandwolke in die Karoo

PG Nel (Ed), JH Pierneef, His life and his work, Perskor, Cape Town and Johannesburg, 1990, page 77

"While Pierneef was hard at work on the station panels, he agreed to hold a large exhibition of 47 paintings in October 1930. The exhibition was opened by JS Smit, who was now administrator of the Transvaal, in a spacious area above the music shop, AR Glen, in Church Street, Pretoria. On this occasion Princess Alice, accompanied by Lady May Cambridge, selected two paintings - the Women's Committee of Pretoria wished to present them to her. The princess chose 'Karoo' and 'Bushveld, Rustenburg'".