oil on canvas

Signature details: signed bottom left; signed and inscribed with the title on the reverse

(1)

46 x 61 cm; framed size: 61.5 x 76 x 6 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Cape Town.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Pieter Wenning, today fondly remembered as a remarkable and influential artist, arrived in South Africa, from Holland in 1905. He had been sent to Pretoria by the Amsterdam bookselling firm, HAUM-de Bussy to work as a bookkeeper and salesman. Although he had a love of art from an early age, and was already identified as a great talent by his art teacher at school, Wenning’s parents discouraged a career in art. In Pretoria he, nonetheless, sketched in his free time. An active member of the local art community, in 1911 he was – along with J.H. Pierneef and George Smithard – a founder member of the Individualists, a group of like-minded artists who exhibited their work together in Pretoria.

Just over a decade after arriving in South Africa the artist was given an important opportunity to travel to the Cape, when cartoonist D.C. Boonzaier funded a 3-month trip to Cape Town in 1916. This was Wenning’s first opportunity to concentrate his full efforts on painting. From this time on, the artist would spend the majority of his time in the area. Dedicating himself completely to art, his ‘Cape years’ were to be his most fruitful and creative and art historian Esmé Berman notes that of his total oeuvre of approximately 300 paintings, at least two-thirds are scenes from the Mother City.[1]

In Hout Bay, Wenning captures a scene of the coastal area in energetic and free brushstrokes, painted in bold impasto. The background and early Chapmans Peak Drive would place the scene between 1915, when construction on the road began and 1921 when Wenning died (Chapmans Peak Drive officially opened the following year, in 1922).[2] To the left the wreckage of the R Morrow gives testament to the area’s early rock lobster industry. In 1903 a British registered sailing ship, the R Morrow, ran aground at Mouille Point. The damaged ship was sold and towed to Hout Bay, where it was beached and turned into a rock lobster processing factory, for The Hout Bay Canning Company. The hulk was a cold storage chamber and above the chamber the cabins had been transformed into offices, although processing was later carried out in a factory built on land.[3]

Tragically, on 31 July 1914 the ship was severely damaged in an explosion caused by a leak in the acetylene gas supply. Seven men died and part of the lobster factory was destroyed. The factory did, however, continue to function until 1946 when the Hout Bay Canning Co. amalgamated with South African Sea Products.[4] What remained of the cannery was buried under a land reclamation project in the 1950s. Wenning’s Hout Bay stands as a humble archive to this important aspect of the history of the fishing harbour.

LEFT | An early image of the R Morrow, before it exploded in 1914

RIGHT | Chapman’s Peak Drive today

^{[1] Berman, E. (1993). Painting in South Africa. Halfway House: Southern Book Publishers (pty) Ltd). p.31.}

^{[2] D, Cowley (Vice Chairman, Hout Bay & Llandudno Heritage Association), personal communication with Sarah Sinisi, 18 May, 2023.}

^{[3] HOUT BAY: A suburb and fishing harbour – FACTS FOUND | HISTORICAL RESEARCH (2015). Available at: http://factsfound.co.za/index.php/2015/09/02/hout-bay-a-seaside-suburb-with-a-fishing-harbour/ (Accessed: 18 August 2023).}

^{[4] Hout Bay Museum (n.d). Hout Bay [pamphlet].}

COLLECTIONS

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town.; Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria.; Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg.; the William Humphreys Gallery, Kimberley, South Africa and the Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg.