Artists
From Albert Adams to Portia Zvavahera, Strauss & Co maintains a detailed database of every artist sold at auction since 2009. Whether it is painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, ceramics or new media, this searchable database lists by artist every lot offered and provides aggregated data useful to seasoned collectors. Important blue-chip artists like William Kentridge, JH Pierneef, Alexis Preller and Irma Stern are introduced with helpful biographies.
Pieter Wenning
South African 1873-1921 Top Artists
Pieter Wenning was born and grew up in the Netherlands and although he showed early talent as an artist and his father was and art dealer and sold artist’s materials, his parents discouraged him from studying art and he went to work for the national railway company instead. And offer of a job at a book dealer in South Africa brought Wenning and his family to Pretoria in 1905. After some years of frugality and careful savings, he was able to import an etching press, and pioneered the medium in this country, while also drawing incessantly and beginning to experiment with painting in oils.
With JH Pierneef and George Smithard, he was a founder member of the Individualists in 1911, a group of like-minded artists who exhibited their work together in Pretoria. Wenning was always dogged by financial problems but with the help of DC Boonzaier and several other friends who provided the funds, he spent three months in the Cape in 1917, and produced enough paintings to mount a private exhibition at which his work was well-received, with almost all being sold. The art market was depressed as a result of WWI, however and Wenning struggled to achieve good prices.
Esmé Berman described how Wenning ‘found himself’ as an artist in the Cape, not only because he was then painting full-time, but also because the gentler climate and “shades of dampened green” familiar from his homeland suited him better than the “elusive ochres of the Highveld”.1 The artist worked relentlessly ‘en plein air’, regardless of the weather and with little concern for his health, but nevertheless, also managed to produce a significant number of still lifes, which Berman considers as equal to, if not more important than, his landscapes. For Wenning, still lifes were essays in “colour form and composition … governed less by the influence of Dutch precedents than by the lessons gained from Oriental art”.2
Wenning died at the age of 47 of tuberculosis, but despite his relatively short career, he produced over 300 paintings in addition to his drawings and etchings. His work is included in the collections of the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, the Pretoria Art Museum, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the William Humphreys Gallery in Kimberley, and the Wits Art Museum, among others.
1. Esmé Berman (1983) Art & Artists of South Africa, Cape Town: AA Balkema, page 497.
2. Ibid, page 498.
83 lots offered 68.67% sold R 21 854 567
Starting at R 5 000
Sold for R 455 200
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Sold for R 96 730
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Sold for R 7 035
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
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Sold for R 2 345
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Sold for R 12 898
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
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Sold for R 432 440
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
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Results in green indicate post sales.
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Get an Estimate- Emeka Udemba
- Ernest Ullmann
- Andrzej Urbanski
- Anton Uys
- Jean-Baptiste Valadié
- Clive van den Berg
- Shany van den Berg
- Caroline van der Merwe
- Eben van der Merwe
- Hentie van der Merwe
- Strijdom van der Merwe
- Hieronymous van der Mij
- Gunther van der Reis
- Jules van der Vijver
- Hannatjie van der Wat
- Pieter van der Westhuizen
- Kees van Dongen
- Attributed to Isaac van Duynen
- Maurice van Essche
- Johan van Heerden
- Louis van Heerden
- Piet van Heerden
- Gail Kathleen van Lingen
- Herman van Nazareth
- Frank (Francois) van Reenen
- Derric van Rensburg
- Jacob van Schalkwyk
- Jaco van Schalkwyk
- Linda van Someren
- Bastiaan van Stenis
- Louis Jansen van Vuuren
- Anton van Wouw
- Riaan van Zyl
- Minnette Vári
- Victor Vasarely
- Aristotelis Vasilikiotis
- Patricia Mary Vaughan
- Nontsikelelo Veleko
- Nico Verboom
- Jan Vermeiren
- Marié Vermeulen-Breedt
- Daan Vermeulen
- Andrew Verster
- Diane Victor
- Edoardo Villa
- Jacques Villon
- Wendy Vincent
- Maria Manuela Vintilescu
- Harold Voigt
- Leigh Voigt
- Walter Voigt
- Jan Ernst Abraham Volschenk
- Vera Volschenk
- Marlene von Dürckheim
- Christine von Huetz-Davisson
- Heinrich von Michaelis
- Anna Vorster
- Alma Ita Vorster
- Gordon Vorster
- Margaret Vorster
- Edouard Vuillard
- Jeremy Wafer
- Mary Wafer
- Andrew Walford
- Marjorie Wallace
- Aidan Walsh
- Andy Warhol
- Agnes Waruguru
- James Webb
- Jessica Webster
- Ingrid Weiersbye
- Wolf Weinek
- Jean Welz
- Pieter Wenning
- Kylie Wentzel
- Tom Wesselmann
- Walter Westbrook
- John Laviers Wheatley
- Taffy (Matthew) Whippman
- Walter Gilbert Wiles
- Sue Williamson
- Gerd Winner
- Edward Wolfe
- Joseph Wolpe
- Max Wolpe
- Judy Woodborne
- Zao Wou-Ki
- Florian Wozniak
- Paul Wunderlich
- Karen Wykerd
- Nhlanhla Xaba
- Mzuzile Mduduzi Xakaza
- Teruko Yokoi
- Mary Yorke
- Ed Young
- Russell Young
- Gavin Younge
- Billie Zangewa
- Florence Zerffi
- Asha Zero
- Dominique Zinkpè
- Michael Gagashe Zondi
- Ndabenhle William Zulu
- Sandile Zulu
- Vuminkosi Zulu
- Ravi Zupa
- Portia Zvavahera
