oil on board

Artwork date: 1930
Signature details: signed and dated

(1)

40 x 55 cm

Pieter Wenning Gallery, Johannesburg., Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg.

Notes:

Along with other landscape painters from the Cape such as Hugo Naudé (1868-1941), JEA Volschenk (1853-1936), Edward Roworth (1880-1964) and others, JH Pierneef (1886-1957), as a painter from the Transvaal, held a prominent and respected place in an early well-established market where landscape as a popular genre went unopposed. He was, however, accredited for his radical break from the more placid, descriptive depictions of the South African landscape. He was also one of the first painters who understood and acknowledged the harsh luminosity of the African sun and its impact on the tonal scale and application of colour as is evident in this painting entitled Karoo near Hofmeyer.

In 1926 Pierneef established his painting career on a full-time basis after his return from a study tour to England and the continent, mainly to the Netherlands where he was exposed to various modernist styles and techniques. Back home, in search of his own artistic identity, Pierneef experimented briefly with pointillism, as seen in the painting Rooiplaat of 1927. The fragmentation of form and the transformation of light and colour into geometrical planes are strikingly depicted in his well-known Composition in Blue of 1928, a sound example of his creative interest in these different styles at the time.

However, owing to his earlier architectural training and his love of especially the Transvaal bushveld, it seemed inevitable that Pierneef would seek his own solutions to the formal, monumental complexities and structures of a landscape which was vastly different to that of the Cape Province. These ideas and techniques came to fruition when he was awarded the South African Railways and Harbours commission in July 1929 to paint thirty two panels for the new building at Park Station in Johannesburg, commemorating scenes of the southern African region and its landscape (Coetzee 1992:10).

Pierneef travelled widely during this time to well-known and lesser known corners of South Africa, as well as to the Karoo, whilst gathering visual documentation for this commission, possibly to familiarise himself with selected scenes. It is likely that this painting, Karoo near Hofmeyer, dated 1930, could have been painted whilst on one of these travels. Unlike the station panel entitled Karoo, with its billowing cumulus clouds and dramatic circle composition, here Pierneef introduced a few mares’ tails drifting across the skies accentuating the immensity of the flat, expansive Karoo landscape.

It is worth noting that although the human form very seldom appears in Pierneef’s landscapes, human habitation is evident and uniquely portrayed in this painting in the open upper section of the stable door of the farm house. He also chose to place the buildings in the centre foreground, further emphasising the vastness of the encompassing Karoo landscape (Coetzee 1988: 34-35).

Eunice Basson

Sources:

Coetzee, JM. (1988). White writing. On the culture of letters in South Africa. New Haven: Radix.

Coetzee, NJ. (1992). Pierneef, Land and Landscape. The Johannesburg Station Panels in Context. Johannesburg: CBM Publishing.

Guenther, E. (1964). JH Pierneef. Commemorative booklet. Johannesburg: Adler Fielding Galleries.

Verster, M. (1938). Die landskap as genre in ons skilderkuns. Die Brandwag, 2 December: 24-25.

Viljoen, D. (1985). Volkskunstenaar se bydrae. Die Burger, 26 April.

Werth, A. (1980). Pierneef Van Wouw. Paintings and sculptures by two South African masters. Catalogue. Pretoria: Pretoria Art Museum.