Literature

JFW Grosskopf (1947) Pierneef: The Man and His Work, Pretoria: Van Schaik, illustrated in colour on page 29.

Provenance

Acquired directly from the artist by JL van Schaik and thence by descent.

Notes

To most observers the newer landscape from Soutpansberg, with its almost religious spirit of endless distance, would appear to be a more faithful copy of nature. Faithful it certainly is; but the pleasing harmony of its disposition of line and colour on the canvas was the fruit of weary mental and technical exertion.

JFW Grosskopf

Piesanghoek, Soutpansberg, Henk Pierneef's glowing and dramatic peak-career masterpiece, was bought directly from the artist by Johannes Lambertus van Schaik, the pioneer Pretoria bookseller and publisher. Born in the Netherlands in 1888, Van Schaik immigrated to the Transvaal in 1911, settling on the Highveld during the first months of Union. After working in the Johannesburg branch of the Dutch bookshop JH de Bussy - alongside Pieter Wenning, incidentally, the trailblazing landscapist - Van Schaik purchased Wormser's Bookstore in Pretoria in 1914, renaming it JL van Schaik.

Through his shop on Church Street East, initially advertised as bookseller, stationer and newsagent, Van Schaik published important Afrikaans texts. From as early as 1915 his imprint appeared on pamphlets and books by prominent academics, authors and educationalists as wide-ranging as Dr SO Los, Dr Ferdinand Postma, Jochen van Bruggen, Gustav Preller, C Louis Leipoldt and Tannie Cicely Clark. Van Schaik's position as publisher, as well as his cultural bent, made him an influential member of Pretoria's literary and artistic circles, and he played an increasingly important role in the promotion of the Afrikaans language after he gained South African citizenship in 1916.

Van Schaik shared his interest in Afrikaner culture with his fellow Pretorian Henk Pierneef, another great supporter of Afrikaans writers, artists, poets and playwrights. It comes as no surprise then that Van Schaik, and later his two sons Jan and Hans, became keen collectors of the artist's paintings. In 1947 Van Schaik also supervised the publication of Hendrik Pierneef: Die Man en Sy Werk, the first monograph on the artist, penned by JFW Grosskopf. Van Schaik's hand in the publication is clear and personal: one of his own and most prized paintings, Piesanghoek, Soutpansberg, the present lot, appears as the book's first colour plate.

Pierneef was clearly drawn to the beauty of Piesanghoek, a fertile stretch of farmland, just to the east of Louis Trichardt, nestled on the slopes of the magnificent Soutpansberg range. From an elevated position, Pierneef painted the gently interlocking outlines of the fields and filled each with patches of green, streaks of yellow and dashes of orange. Beyond, and far into the distance, he built up the imposing mountains with ribbons of moody purple and blue, and above them hung a cloudscape of shimmering grey. He chose short and agitated brushstrokes for the foreground, but made them long and fluid towards the horizon.

Painted in 1928, Piesanghoek, Soutpansberg just predates the artist's famous depiction of Louis Trichardt, commissioned for the main concourse of the Johannesburg Railway Station. While painted in close proximity to one another, the styles of the two works are surprisingly different: the former is carefully linear, muted and balanced, monumental and meticulous; the latter is impressionistic, spirited and electrically coloured.