Notes

Battiss was fascinated by Gauguin from an early age. He placed the Frenchman high on the list of artists to be studied, as is evident from the syllabus he drew up for his students at Pretoria Boys' High where he taught intermittently from 1936 (the syllabus and his class notes are presently housed in the school’s museum). Gauguin left France for Tahiti in 1891, writing in his autobiography, Noa Noa, that in doing so he had 'escaped everything that is artificial and conventional'. Battiss visited the same island in 1978, and made a watercolour of Gauguin's grave. He also visited what he thought of as 'Gauguin's Beach', marking the special moment by including playful semi-nudes and the full title on the canvas. 'Like Gauguin, Battiss was deeply interested in the mythical or cosmological nature of indigenous cultures and felt the need to escape, in some manner, the confines of his own restrictive world.'¹

¹ Karel Nel. (2016) 'Rock Pools and Islands: The Imaginative Landscape of Walter Battiss: King of Fook' in Warren Siebrits. (2016) Walter Battiss: 'I invented myself', The Jack Ginsberg Collection. Ampersand Publications, page 306.