Notes

18 hand-carved and incised panels, with oil highlighting, set in a stinkwood and yellowwood frame, accompanied by 9 preparatory drawings.

In 1977, the Cape Wine Growers Association (KWV) commissioned Cecil Skotnes to produce a wood panel for display in the Laborie Manor House in Paarl. Skotnes reworked The Epic of Gilgamesh – an ancient Mesopotamian odyssey about a Mesopotamian ruler named Gilgamesh – to visually narrate the history of wine and its arrival in South Africa. This ancient poem, whose contents are preserved on 12 incomplete Akkadian-language tablets unearthed in 1853 from Assyrian mounds at Nineveh, contains the earliest reference to a vineyard in literature. Skotnes directly references the poem in the first of the 18 stinkwood blocks enclosed by two incised doors. The quoted text includes a fragment likening grapes to lapis lazuli and “magnificent to look upon”. Panels three to five describe winemaking in Canaan, Greece, Rome and France, and panels six to 18 describe wine’s arrival and cultivation in South Africa.

Skotnes was an ardent wine collector and credited the art collector and dealer Vittorio Meneghelli with introducing him to the pleasures of food and wine. While his KWV commission unashamedly reveals his epicurean tastes, it is far more than a monument to personal pleasure, as is detailed by art historian Frieda Harmsen: “Above all else, The Origin of Wine exudes Skotnes’s delight in the act of artistic creation. Always the meticulous craftsman and disciplined designer working according to formalist principles, he here relaxes somewhat to allow intuition and the natural rhythms of his hand free rein. Stylistically The Origin of Wine signals a turning point in his career. The triptych [panel plus two doors] is much gentler and more lyrical than his previous work. Its images are contemplative and intimate rather than heroic and autocratic, the execution is delicate rather than robust and the colours are luminous rather than aggressive … The triptych, made in the year before Skotnes finally moved to Cape Town after much soul-searching, indecision and several exploratory sojourns in the Cape, stands as a watershed in his artistic career.”

Frieda Harmsen (1996) ‘Artist Resolute’, in Cecil Skotnes. Cape Town, Cecil Skotnes: http://cecilskotnes.com/artist-resolute-by-frieda-harmsen/, accessed 23 February 2021.

Provenance

The KWV Collection.

Exhibited

Sasol Art Museum, Stellenbosch, KWV Cecil Skotnes Exhibition Tour, 7 to 21 April 2011.
Irma Stern Museum (UCT), Cape Town, KWV Cecil Skotnes Exhibition Tour, 5 to 12 May  2011.
Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg, KWV Cecil Skotnes Exhibition Tour, 20 May to 19 June 2011.
William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley, KWV Cecil Skotnes Exhibition Tour, 1 to 10 July 2011.
Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein, KWV Cecil Skotnes Exhibition Tour, 22 July to 1 August 2011.
Nirox Project Space, Johannesburg, KWV Cecil Skotnes Exhibition Tour, 12 August to 28 August 2011.
Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, KWV Cecil Skotnes Exhibition Tour, 13 October to 29 October 2011.
Ron Belling Gallery, Port Elizabeth, KWV Cecil Skotnes Exhibition Tour, 16 November to 2 December 2011. 
Laborie Wine Farm, Paarl, KWV Cecil Skotnes Exhibition Tour, 15 December 2011 to 13 January 2012.

Literature

Frieda Harmsen (1996) ‘Artist Resolute’ in Frieda Harmsen (ed) Cecil Skotnes, published privately in conjunction with the 1996 Cecil Skotnes Retrospective exhibition at the South African National Gallery, Referenced in the text and illustrated in black and white on page 47.

Pippa Skotnes (2011) ‘Painting by the Vine’ in The Epic of Everlasting: An exhibition of the art of Cecil Skotnes, Stellenbosch: KWV, exhibition catalogue, referenced in the text on page 13 and illustrated in colour on page 19.

Pippa Skotness (2011), http://cecilskotnes.com/the-origin-of-winethe-epic-of-gilgamesh/, accessed 23 February 2021.

Hymli Krige and Elsa Hoogenhout (2011) The Epic of Everlasting: An Exhibition of the Art of Cecil Skotnes, Paarl: KWV, exhibition catalogue, illustrated in colour and referenced in text, unpaginated.