Important South African and International Art, Decorative Arts & Jewellery

Live Auction, 15 October 2018

Art: Evening Session

Sold for

ZAR 625 900
Lot 533
  • Adolph Jentsch; Schafrevier (sic)


Lot Estimate
ZAR 500 000 - 700 000
Selling Price
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
ZAR 625 900

About this Item

German/Namibian 1888-1977
Schafrevier (sic)

signed with the artist's initials; signed, numbered No 27 on the stretcher and inscribed with the title on two Peter and Regina Strack labels with accession number 011 and collection number 17 along with an Arts Association of Namibia label adhered to the reverse

oil on canvas
46 by 70cm excluding frame

Notes

“Where modern art screams, the paintings of Jentsch whisper”1 wrote Olga Levison in her biography of the German artist, Adoplph Jentsch, who fell so in love with the arid landscape of South-West Africa that he dedicated the rest of his life to capturing it’s raw essence in watercolour and oil paint. 

Trained in Dresden during the heady days of modernist avant-gardism, Jentsch moved to South-West Africa in 1938 where he was so “deeply imbued with the mystique of South-West Africa that he evoked the silent poetry of this great, empty land”.2

Famed for the spiritual approach that he brought to his naturalistic renderings of traditionally bleak and typically monochromatic scenes of desiccated rivers and parched fields of wild savannah, Jentsch combined an objective observation of nature together with his uniquely subjective response to strip away all but the very essential, thereby getting to the heart of the landscape.

In the present lot, Schafrevier (sic), Jentsch depicts a dry river bed that is typical of the winter months in SWA. As Levison observes “there is a classical quality to the very simplicity and under-statement of his paintings, a subtlety in their economy of line”.3 Likewise, Nico Roos notes that “the primary significance of his perception of nature is that it leads him to a clear realisation that because of the influence of light, there are in the landscape few defined boundaries and that outlines are constantly dissolved”.

  1. Olga Levinson. (1973) Adolph Jentsch, Cape Town: Human & Rousseau. Page 73.
  2. ibid
  3. ibid
  4. Nico Roos. (1978) Art in South-West Africa, Pretoria: J.P van der Walt. Page 211.
  5. Olga Levinson. (1973) Adolph Jentsch, Cape Town: Human & Rousseau. Page 72.

Provenance

Inherited from D von Funcke.

The Late Peter and Regina Strack Collection.

Exhibited

Arts Association of Namibia, Windhoek, Adolph Jentsch Commemorative Exhibition, 20 April 1982, catalogue number 28.

View all Adolph Jentsch lots for sale in this auction