Notes

‘On 12 January 1926, the Pierneefs sailed on a freighter, S.S.Toba, via Port Said down the east coast. They were the only two passengers on board and, since the ship had to spend from between two and six days at every port, Pierneef was often able to go out and paint the countryside to his heart’s content’.^1
1. PG Nel. (1990) JH Pierneef: His life and his work, Johannesburg: Perskor, Page 67.

Like Hugo Naudé before him who, having returned to South Africa from Europe via the east coast of Africa, and been exposed to the work of the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists, Pierneef was infused with the excitement of recording new subjects, and armed with a fresh repertoire of painterly expression.

Painted offshore from the S.S. Thoba’s deck, this view records narrow coastal town of Ilha de Mozambique, with colonial buildings in contrast to a tropical African coastline, painted through an Impressionistic lens.

Rendered in grey, red and pink tones, the buildings are backed by a narrow border of lush foliage, nestled between a warm blue sea in the foreground and an extensive sky above. The dynamism of the composition lies in the extensive volatile sky, where a bulbous cumulonimbus at the centre of a horizontal cloud formation towers majestically above the narrow horizontal band of buildings and sea in the foreground.

Pierneef’s impressionistic technique of truncated and gestural brushstrokes provides a flickering and lively quality and can also be found in another work from this period, titled Egyptian Felucca Sailing Boats, sold in Strauss & Co’s Cape Town salerooms in October 2021 for R2 503 600.