Notes

Artist Focus: John Meyer
Lots 201-204

John Meyer was born in Bloemfontein in 1942, the same year, incidentally, in which Edward Hopper, the giant of American realist painting, unveiled his extraordinary and instantly recognisable Nighthawks (fig. 1). The coincidence is a neat one, as Meyer’s impressive body of work, built up over half a century, has made him the doyen of the realist movement in southern Africa. Briefly trained at the Witwatersrand Technical College School of Art in Johannesburg in the early 1960s, and accustomed to long international painting stints, particularly in Britain and the United States, his unique, mature style, typified by striking illusion and rich, dazzling brushwork, has made his reputation among collectors both locally and abroad. Thanks to his long association with the Everard Read gallery (his first solo show there was in 1972), he has consistently exhibited new and distinct bodies of work. While he has elevated the local landscape and portraiture tradition, he has also showed-off his exquisite versatility across still life, narrative and genre painting.

Four fabulous Meyer examples are included here (Lots 201–204). The group might only hint at the artist’s vast technical ingenuity, but it certainly gives a sense of his wide-ranging subjects and flair for the dramatic: we see an expansive Golden Gate landscape (Lot 202), a fly-fisherman knee-deep in foaming rapids (Lot 203), a dronelike view across the Olifants River Valley (Lot 201), and a Karoo-stoep still life with its tired succulents, sturdy window shutters and its unravelling cane table (Lot 204).T

Thanks to the artist and his studio staff for assistance with cataloguing these lots.

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In the 1980s and 1990s, John Meyer embarked on a series of paintings based on solitary fly-fishermen savouring a perfect modern-day lull. Inspired by frequent trips to the highlands between Sabie and Mashishing, where he could sketch beside or wade through the Majubane, Whisky and Spekboom rivers, these pictures caught moments of seclusion, silence and contentment. The present lot, A Catch Downstream, is beautifully balanced in its composition: the river moves quickly and diagonally from right to left; a high thicket, shadowy, dark and cool, looms on the far bank, while a deeper pool downstream catches the light from an open sky. The way the artist has painted the water’s surface, moreover, as it eddies, swirls and foams, is quite mesmerising. As sunlight penetrates the shallower sections of river, the colours of submerged stones glimmer and change from brown to liquid orange and back again. The reeds, grasses and treetops are a shifting spectacle too: sparks of yellow, white and crimson fly across much darker background greens. These flashy highlights bring to mind the surfaces of Gwelo Goodman, or even some of Constable’s six-footers.

Painted in 1997, A Catch Downstream was one of the final works in this hugely popular series.