Notes

Alexander Rose-Innes was born in 1915 in Beaufort West and established in Port Elizabeth with his family in 1927, where he started his artistic journey at the Art School of the Port Elizabeth Technical College. After completing his studies, he enrolled as an apprentice sign-writer, continuing to pursue his art in his free time. He was a painter of everyday sceneries and acts of the everyday life where he portrayed sensitivity towards his subjects – always rendered in warm colours and subdued tones - following conventional realism. An immediate intimacy embodied by the delicate tones and the use of close-up views can be grasped in his artworks. Rose-Innes only arrived in Cape Town, artistic capital of South Africa, in 1956 and had his first solo exhibition in 1958, having previously participated uniquely in group shows in the Eastern Province. This was the first of many solo shows that exhibited in South Africa and Belgium; his works were included in numerous national and international exhibitions. In 1986, he was honoured by the University of Pretoria with a retrospective exhibition of his work and a medal for his contribution to the arts in South Africa. 

Provenance

Stephan Welz & Co in Association with Sotheby's, Johannesburg, 30 July 2007, lot 379, with the title 'Rokie'. 

Literature

Martin Bekker (1991) The Art of Alexander Rose-Innes, Cape Town: Perskor Publishers, illustrated in colour on page 116 with the title 'Man Sitting'.