Notes

The Acacia tree, fundamental in Jacob Pierneef’s oeuvre, was drawn and painted extensively within his long and prolific career. Few examples however, are as striking as the present lot, combining the landscape, clouds and trees for which his work is most renowned and sought-after. Painted at a time of year when the colours of the bushveld and the Highveld sky were at their brightest, Lowveld in Summer represents the culmination of all the most desirable aspects of the artist’s work.

Influenced by the Dutch artist, Willem van Konijnenburg, Pierneef’s work moved towards the geometric simplification of the landscape, where areas of flat monotones were carefully composed to convey the sense of order and symmetry that he perceived in the untouched scenery around him. Disinclined to include figures or animals in these epic vistas in which he sought to convey the enormity of nature, the landscape remained the primary theme throughout the artist’s life. He was known to spend hours on end working in isolation deep in the veld where he produced hundreds of sketches of landscape and flora, famously propounding that “…art has to be born of your own surroundings and your own soil”.¹

The Vachellia tortilis (Umbrella thorn), one of the Highveld’s most iconic symbols of endurance and tenacity, provided some of the artist’s favourite and most often depicted subjects. Known to tolerate high alkalinity, drought, frost, high temperatures, sandy or stony soils, strongly sloped rooting surfaces and sand storms, it is an apt symbol of strength and virility, emblematic of the regard in which Pierneef held his natural surrounds.

¹ Esmé Berman. (1983) Art & Artists of South Africa. Cape Town and Rotterdam: AA Balkema. Page 328.