Notes

The Diary of Johannes Meintjes, catalogue number JM 880.

This painting was originally intended as the cover for Meintjes' book, De La Rey, Lion of the West, published in 1966 by Hugh Keartland, Johannesburg.  A copy of this book is included in this lot.

Two entries from Meintjes’ unpublished diary manuscript (‘Dagboek VIII) relate:

7 July 1965 :

‘Ernest Stanton [Hugh Keartland Publishers, Johannesburg] phoned me in a state of great excitement yesterday afternoon. They apparently received a large volume of material relating to General De la Rey and they are now looking for a suitable biographer. And because they were so impressed by my Olive Schreiner, could I?, would I? A commission’.

11 November 1965 :

‘Work is progressing well. DLR [manuscript of book on De la Rey] is at page 245 and I have just completed a good portrait of him in oil, intended as cover for the book’.

Provenance

Mrs Cecily Niven (Sir Percy FitzPatrick's daughter)

Literature

Kobus Opperman. (2007) Die Dagboek van Johannes Meintjes, (unpublished). Volume VIII, pages 114, 144, 243, 245, 248, 249 and 255; Volume IX, page 27.