Notes

As Moses Tladi produced such a small body of work, and as the majority remain part of the artist’s estate, examples appear on the market only rarely. Two jewel-like works, Near the Mill, Kroonstad (OFS) and Two Hillocks, featured in these salerooms in November 2017, and each generated enormous interest. On the back of two major retrospective exhibitions, first at the Iziko National Gallery in Cape Town and then at the Wits Art Museum in Johannesburg, Tladi is finally drawing some of the attention his work deserves. The two works on offer here, Farm Cottage Driefontein, J.H.B. and Mountain Landscape, show Tladi’s gentle, signature approach to the landscape: the light is golden, the air still, and the scene closely and affectionately observed. The former picture, a postcard-size depiction of a favourite farm in the foothills of the Magaliesberg, appreciates a moment of rural, domestic calm, while the mountains of the latter painting, made more compositionally imposing, and given a coarse, earthy texture, are imbued with a sense of majesty and awe.