Provenance

Gordon Leith, and thence by descent to the current owner.

Literature

A.E. Duffey (2008) Anton van Wouw: The Smaller Works, Pretoria: Protea Book House, another cast illustrated in colour on page 33-35.

J Ernst (2006) Anton van Wouw: 'n Biografie, Vanderbijilpark: Corals Publishers, another cast from the edition illustrated in monotone on page 65.

Notes

During the Anglo-Boer War, with Pretoria in British hands, Anton van Wouw maintained his studio routine, which included giving private lessons. Besides drawing from life, his students sketched and studied from a broad collection of Renaissance plaster castings and miniatures, as well as architectural embellishments and sculpted fragments. While most of his students were girls andyoung women – most young men had enlisted – Van Wouw took under his wing a talented teenager called Gordon Leith. A number of photographs from 1901, which show the artist’s studio brimming with books, ceramics, paintings, mirrors and heavy tapestries, catch the youthful and besmocked Leith, whether posing for the camera or at work, alongside his mentor. Van Wouw chose a similarly intimate studio moment as the subject of the present lot, The Art Student, which used Leith as the model.

Van Wouw depicted Leith seated on a wooden chest, his legs outstretched, balancing an artist’s monopod drawing board on his hips. He leans forward, sketching, a picture of concentration. His body is still but comfortable, and the sculpture evokes a sense of contentment, quiet and craft. With careful observation and evident skill, Van Wouw picked up on remarkable detail: notice the turned-up trouser hems, the crisscrossed laces, the wood grain and metallic edges of the chest, the eraser at hand, the sheets of paper and sharpened pencil, the discarded penknife, and the boyish chin and closely cropped hair. While the sculpture is a beautiful vignette of an artist’s practice, it is also a close and impressive likeness of the youthful Leith.

The Art Student is part of a select group of remarkable, desk-scale sculptures that Van Wouw made during the Anglo-Boer War. Having spent the last half of the 1890s on the monumental, multi-figure arrangement commemorating President Paul Kruger, the smaller works during the War years also included the evocative Leemans the Postman (1901) and the ever-popular Bushman Hunter (1902).

Gordon Leith, who would become a major figure in the architectural history of South Africa, working in a so-called Grand Manner in the tradition of Sir Herbert Baker, was bornin Knysna in 1885 to Scottish parents. The family moved to Pretoria in 1889, and Leith attended the Staatsmodel School alongside a young Henk Pierneef, Fanie Eloff and Gerard Moerdyk. After his drawing lessons with Van Wouw, some painting tips from the landscapist Frans Oerder, and a brief stint as a draughtsman and tracer with the Department of Public Works, Leith studied at the Architectural Association in London between 1905 and 1907, shortly thereafter being elected an Associate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Back in South Africa he worked under Baker, playing a significant and largely underappreciated part in the design of the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

Having worked at Baker’s London offices in 1913, particularly on drawings for New Delhi, Leith married in 1914 and enlisted in 1915, serving as an officer in the Royal Field Artillery. In France he earned the Military Cross for bravery, but was invalided back to England due to mustard gas exposure. He worked in London under Baker and Sir Edwin Lutyens as part of the Imperial War Graves Commission, before returning to South Africa, opening his own practice in Johannesburg in 1921. Alongside private homes in Johannesburg and Pretoria, Leith and his office designed numerous public buildings across the old Transvaal, including town halls, banks, stations, memorials, churches, technical colleges and hospitals. Standout commissions included the Rand Water Board Building (1925–1927) in Johannesburg, the Johannesburg Railway Station (1926–1931), and the Bloemfontein City Hall (1933–1935).

Leith was buried in Pretoria’s Old Cemetery in 1965, near the resting places of Paul Kruger and Henk Pierneef. The important Pretorian architect Norman Eaton, who Leith had mentored through the 1920s, penned his obituary. Besides recalling the vision of Leith on his six-cylinder red Indian motorcycle, Eaton highlighted the importance of Leith’s sculptural apprenticeship under Van Wouw, crediting this influence for Leith’s ‘keen sense of perception of the relationship of sculpture to architecture’.

Van Wouw with students in his studio, circa 1901. The young man behind Van Wouw is Gordon Leith, the other students are unknown.

Van Wouw teaching students in his studio in Pretoria during the Anglo-Boer War, circa 1901. The figure behind Van Wouw is young Gordon Leith. Note the small plaster sculpture of The Art Student in the foreground.