Leemans, The Postman, 1901

Provenance

Governor Gerard Rissik's private collection, thence by descent.

Stephan Welz & Co, Johannesburg, 20 April 2011, lot 573.

Notes

Anton van Wouw’s Leemans, the Postman stands among the most incisive of his early figure studies: a character portrait modelled at the height of the South African War’s aftershocks and conceived in Pretoria in 1901. In this compact bronze, van Wouw compresses a world of biography and circumstance – creased jacket, sweat darkened veld hat, roughened hands, and bristling beard – into a single, tautly observed image of civic service and stoic dignity. The work’s economy of means and psychological acuity signal van Wouw’s abiding strength as a modeller of people rather than types, and it remains one of the rarest and most sought-after bronzes from his formative decade.

The subject, known simply as Leemans, was a familiar figure to Pretorians of the era. The artist reportedly captured him in a habitual gesture: hat briefly doffed before delivering the post,
a small ceremony of respect that frames the sculpture’s choreography. The slightly inclined torso and forward-set leg suggest courteous momentum. Van Wouw balances these diagonals
with a compact verticality, so that the figure reads as both in motion and firmly grounded, a messenger between private households and a society under strain.

The present lot bears the stamp of Fonderia G. Massa, Rome, one of the premier Italian foundries used by van Wouw for lifetime castings, alongside G. Nisini. Early Italian casts of Leemans, the Postman are prized for their crisp edge definition, fine chasing, and nuanced patina work. The present example exhibits those hallmarks: sharply undercut beard and moustache, knife-edged lapels, and a subtle modulation of surface that articulates fabric from flesh. These technical qualities materially support the sculpture’s psychological reading: the metal seems to hold
the heat of a long day’s route, the weight of municipal responsibility, and the private dignity of a working man whose service stitched a scattered public together.

Van Wouw conceived Leemans during a period of artistic consolidation and heightened sensitivity to character. His small bronzes from these years, miners, messengers, hunters, and labourers, chart a human topography of the Transvaal with an empathy that resists caricature. In Leemans, this empathy takes the form of close looking and restraint. There is no theatrical
flourish; instead, a frank realism anchors the work. The figure’s centre of gravity sits low and slightly forward. The face, deeply furrowed, carries the memory of weather and worry. Van Wouw’s modelling, never fussy, is alive to small asymmetries, the slight twist of the torso, the uneven break in trouser hem, the softened heel, that bring the figure closer to lived experience.

A resonant counterpoint to van Wouw’s Leemans is Vincent van Gogh’s celebrated portrait series of the Arles postman Joseph Roulin (1888–89). Van Gogh found in Roulin a steadfast friend and, through him, a modern archetype: the public servant as moral anchor. Van Gogh’s paintings use saturated colour and decorative backgrounds, laurel-green jackets against patterned floral design, to communicate warmth, loyalty, and the consolations of friendship. Van Wouw’s bronze strips decoration away and leans on weight, pose, and texture. Both artists, however, elevate the postman from mere functionary to emblem of community. In van Wouw’s hands, the postman’s uniform is less a badge than a second skin: creased, practical, and weathered. The sculptor’s tonal language is patina rather than pigment; his brushwork is the tracked tool and chased plane. If van Gogh sought psychological radiance through colour, van Wouw finds it in the gravity of stance and the truth of detail. The comparison underscores a shared modern preoccupation, dignity in ordinary work, articulated through the distinct vocabularies of bronze and oil.

Strauss & Co, Anton van Wouw: Leemans the Postman, auction catalogue entry, Johannesburg, 20 May 2019.

Esmé Berman (1970) Art and Artists of South Africa, Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, page 312–313.

A E Duffy (2008) Anton van Wouw: The Smaller Works, Pretoria: Protea Books, page 32.

Literature

Morris J Cohen (1938) Anton Van Wouw, Sculptor of South African Life, Johannesburg: Radford, Adlington, another cast illustrated on page 21.

Alexander Duffey (1981) Anton van Wouw en die van Wouwhuis, Pretoria: Butterworth en Kie, another cast illustrated on page 44.

J Ernst (2006) Anton van Wouw: A Biography, Vanderbijlpark: Corals, another cast illustrated in black and white on page 102.

Alexander Duffey (2008) Anton Van Wouw: The Smaller Works, Pretoria: Protea Book House, another cast illustrated in black and white on page 32.

Exhibited

Pretoria Arts Association, Pretoria, The Art Exhibition, 31 October to 5 November 1904, another cast exhibited.