Notes

The Gentle Spring, painted by Peter Clarke in 1964, is a wonderfully optimistic and celebratory work. This was a particularly prolific time for the artist as he produced a rich and varied selection of paintings of the community of Tesselaarsdal and the surrounding landscape.

For Clarke, Tesselaarsdal, a rural community near Caledon, became a retreat from urban life, social hardships, and the heated political rhetoric of the day. He acknowledged the hard life and poverty of this rural community but clearly found solace with its people and the beauty of the landscape.

In The Gentle Spring the artist reflects the influence of Cubism with a sequence of geometric mountains smoothly rendered in hues of brown and green, and the angular black and dark brown of the branches. The painting is dominated by the burst of more impressionistically conceived blossoms in splendid tones of pink. The bright sunlight has cast dark shadows on either side of a young girl who holds a large bouquet in her arms, seemingly as a tribute to new beginnings and looking toward the future. From the blue of the girl’s cardigan, Clarke leads the eye to the beautiful Cape sky where wisps of clouds form a dramatic backdrop to the bold branches covered in blossoms below.

Provenance

Acquired directly from the artist by the current owner.