Notes

Pieter Wenning is widely regarded as the ‘father’ of South African impressionism but his spontaneous approach, with painterly techniques and emphasis on transient atmospheric light and weather effects, was shared by other so-called ‘first generation’ impressionist artists such as John Henry Amshewitz, Strat Caldecott, Gwelo Goodman, Hugo Naudé, Nita Spilhaus and Florence Zerfi. Their means of expression and choice of subject matter – mountain landscapes, Malay Quarter street scenes, Cape Dutch farm houses, fishermen’s cottages, and domestic still lifes – influenced a younger, even more progressive second generation that included Gregoire Boonzaier and Terence McCaw (energetic co-founders of the influential New Group in 1937), as well as Robert Broadley, Alexander Rose-Innes and Cecil Thornley Stewart. A third generation, including Adriaan Boshoff, David Botha, Errol Boyley, Herbert Coetzee, Titta Fasciotti, Conrad Theys, Chris Tugwell, Piet van Heerden and Gordon Vorster, continued the same concerns and means of expression into the second half of the twentieth century.