Notes

When facing a picture as monumental, as rewarding, and as magnificent as this, there can be no doubt whatsoever of Henk Pierneef’s deep love of the bushveld. No other scene was more inspirational to the artist, and no other subject closer to his heart. Even among Pierneef’s exceptional output, rarely in a single picture does one get a sense that he has at once summoned all his powers of compositional design, all his sensitivity for subdued colour harmonies, and all his flair for the grand and the dazzling. Bosveld, this sale’s exceptional cover lot, shows Pierneef at his most iconic: the linear clarity and convincing depth is familiar – so too the hush and peace – not to mention the heavy, deeply-rooted trees fanning upwards to the sky, their branches forming a graceful tracery through which can be seen a moody, glowing cloudburst.

Certainly one of Pierneef’s mature masterpieces, Bosveld was painted in 1953, with his name long in lights. Over the previous half century, he had developed an ever-recognisable aesthetic, helped establish a local landscape tradition, and achieved enormous popularity and critical success. With all this behind him, little surprise then that the best paintings from his twilight years were suffused with an extra sense of ease, lucidity and confidence.

Inundated with studio visits, embassy and consulate invitations, lecture requests, and exhibition openings, Pierneef’s painting time in the early 1950s was often limited. To avoid these obligations, and to clear time to work, he habitually travelled. He regularly visited Vreeland, for instance, the Lion-Cachet farm at Henley-on-Klip, where he would hole-up in a guest rondavel and paint his beloved willow trees. Significantly, he made several trips to the Lowveld in 1952 and 1953, any one of which might have inspired the present lot. Pinpointing the scene is difficult without artist inscriptions, but the flora and terrain suggests a northern territory, perhaps along the Luvuvhu or Limpopo rivers. While always favouring decorative power and divine balance over a straightforward likeness, Pierneef’s knowledge of indigenous trees remained obvious. In this wide riparian floodplain, certain species are clear: an ana tree (Faidherbia albida) dominates the foreground; a statuesque mopani (Colophospermum mopane), with its orange-tinged crown, is placed on the left of the composition, just ahead of a silvery-barked leadwood (Combretum imberbe). Whether or not these trees naturally appeared in such a rhythmic formation is moot: Pierneef edited the scene, no doubt, but he painted a magic bushveld view one might conjure from happy memory.

Thanks to Professors Bob and Mary Scholes from the University of the Witwatersrand for their help with the description of this lot.

Provenance

Bonhams, London, 27 October 2010, lot 58.

Exhibited

Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, A Space for Landscape: The Work of JH Pierneef, 8 July to 12 September 2015.

Literature

Wilhelm van Rensburg (2015) A Space for Landscape: The Work of JH Pierneef, Johannesburg: Standard Bank Gallery, illustrated in colour on page 104.