Notes

Depicting indigenous trees has always been Pierneef’s forte as a fine artist. Commenting on his momentous exhibition at the Lidchi Gallery, Johannesburg, in 1942, a Star reporter describes it thus: ‘’Flat, decorative and formal in treatment, and high in key for the most part, the tree paintings represent an enthusiasm which finds full expression in the large painting, Patriarch of the Bushveld. This is a picture one can walk into and explore, it is the Bushveld’’. The Hardekoolboom could well have been another patriarch in Pierneef’s oeuvre as a foremost painter of trees. He made numerous sketches of trees while criss-crossing the country on his frequent painting trips. A study for the present lot, for example, is reproduced in the first biography of Pierneef by JFW Grosskopf (1945, Plate 9).  Says Grosskopf, “Pierneef himself believes in hard work and patient preparation. For many of the panels of the Johannesburg Station he worked out up to thirty, and even more preliminary sketches and projects. When he puts our South African trees, particularly the Bushveld trees that he loves, into one of his more decorative pictures in a somewhat formalized manner, those that know him also know that he has made hundreds of drawings from nature of all those trees with punctilious detail. He has drawn the roots gripping the earth, leaves and thorns, blossoms or curled seed pods, with the accuracy of a botanist.’’¹

Pierneef places the Hardekoolboom slightly off centre to the left in the overall composition in such a manner that the canopy of the tree forms part of an overarching umbrella form, a form completed on the right by dramatic storm clouds. The lush green canopy is complemented by the yellow acacia trees in the background. In addition, the big tree contrasts sharply with the white of the cloud behind it. Pierneef usually foregrounds his bulbous clouds in a vast sky that takes up most of the picture plane but, in this case, the emphasis is clearly on the tree.

Hardekoolboom is one of many in the Pierneef inventory of indigenous trees judging from a catalogue list of one of his exhibitions in Cape Town in 1947: The White Tree – Lowveld, Thorn Tree – Bushveld, Hardekoolbome, Rooibosboom, Harpuisboom, Wild Acacia, and so on. The list is extended when Pierneef included Baobab Tree and Siringa Tree in the seminal exhibition, Overseas Art from South Africa at the Tate Gallery, London in 1948, an exhibition that travelled to The Hague in the Netherlands in 1949. Charles te Water aptly called Pierneef the ‘doyen’ of South African painting in the catalogue that accompanied this exhibition. Hardekoolboom, a majestic tree in its own right, is certainly another of Pierneef’s patriarchs of the Bushveld.

1  JFW Grosskopf. (1945) Hendrik Pierneef: Die Man en sy Werk, Pretoria: JL van Schaik, Bpk. Page 12.

Literature

cf. JFW Grosskopf. (1945) Hendrik Pierneef: Die Man en sy Werk, Pretoria: JL van Schaik, Bpk. A preparatory sketch for this work is illustrated, plate 9.