Notes

Pieter Wenning’s painting of Keerom Street looking towards town was certainly painted long before the Provincial Building was erected in Wale Street but after the Cape High Court was completed in 1912. Visible on the right is the august building, designed by Hawke & McKinlay. With its local granite façade, it was suitably magisterial for what became, on the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the Cape of Good Hope Provincial Division of the new Supreme Court of South Africa.

Interestingly, the main entrance, according to the original plan of the building, would have been in Queen Victoria Street. However, when the judges learnt that that might mean that they would forfeit the luxury of a view over the Company Gardens, it was decided that the facade of the building would be reversed, so that the main entrance is now in Keerom Street.ⁱ

The spire of the Metropolitan Methodist Church on Greenmarket Square towers above the low buildings at the end of the street. Bathed in warm light, this street scene offers a glimpse into the early twentieth-century history of the city. Together with Claremont, CP, also on this auction, Wenning provides us with two complementary views of early Cape Town – one of the typically rustic suburbs and the other of a ‘modern city’.ⁱⁱ

^{i. Frans Rautenbach, ‘The History of the Cape Provincial Division’ in http://www.sabar.co.za/law-journals/2010/april/2010-april-vol023-no1-pp34-36.pdf
ii. Hans Fransen in conversation with Emma Bedford and emails dated 7 January 2011.}

The proceeds from the sale of this lot will be donated to charity.

Provenance

Gustav Katz Collection

Sold: Sotheby Parke Bernet, Johannesburg, The Collection of Mr and Mrs Leslie Derber, 5 December, 1977, lot 89

Literature

J du P Scholtz, DC Boonzaier en Pieter Wenning: Verslag van 'n Vriendskap, Tafelberg, Cape Town, 1973, illus pl 54