Notes

After an inspiring painting trip to Zululand in 1896, and with Anglo-Boer tensions growing, Oerder continued to paint landscapes and portraits in the Transvaal, moving regularly between Pretoria and the fast-developing town of Johannesburg to the south. He made evocative paintings between Meintjeskop and Doornfontein, Wonderboom and the Bezuidenhoutsvallei. Considering the present lot, it seems he also painted the marshlands on the original Braamfontein farm, acquired in 1891 by the mining magnate Hermann Eckstein. A young timber plantation for the nearby mines had been laid out there, incidentally, and given the name Sachsenwald, after Otto von Bismarck's famous estate. Oerder painted the lone willow surrounded by shallow waters in the late afternoon, with the reeds bent in the wind and the clouds throwing gentle shadows on the banks. Shortly after Oerder captured this scene the land was donated to the Johannesburg Town Council. By the time a young Henk Pierneef sketched the same view, in the autumn of 1913, the Hermann Eckstein Park had been formally marked out, the lake had been deepened and granted a boating licence, and the nearby Johannesburg Zoo was building its first elephant house.