Iconic landscape painter Pierneef’s Rustenburg Kloof wins hearts of many at Pre-sale cocktail event
The event that saw VIP guests congregate around this art piece was held on Tuesday, 18 July 2023 ahead of the auction on Tuesday July 25, 2023. CITYLIFE/ARTS was there to witness the interest by collectors in this single artist consignment.
By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor
We converged and were left in awe of the artistry of this icon of fine art in South Africa, with an inimitable track record of creating signature landscapes that today are hard to emulate. I am here talking about the pre-auction sale cocktail event I attended at Strauss &Co. on Tuesday, 18, July 2023 in Houghton, Johannesburg featuring the works of iconic South African landscape artist JH Pierneef.
Those with big pockets were of course taking note of which art works they would bid for, but it did not stop us with shallow pockets to admire JH PIerneef’s sheer artistry and single-mindedness when it comes to creating art works that visually defined the South Africa of his time. The art pieces are almost like a visual representation of how he saw South Africa of the time, a visual poetry about the country that he loved.
Yes, people have several opinions about what his art and art practice meant ideologically, and that debate will continue to rage on in the fields of politics and academia with opinions as diverse and complex as the political biography of this country.
But one thing that is beyond debate, something that transcends politics is the fact that he was indeed a fine artist, a master of his craft who found a distinct voice among his generation of practising artists, to the extent that today, it has become easy to pick a Pieneerf among artists on a the wall from a distance. His signature pieces are so him that it is not easy to confuse his work with that of others working in similar style –even from a distance. In other words Pierneef was a master of his own craftsmanship, defining and dominating landscape painting among his generation of artists.
What I like about this particular exhibition, featuring works from a single artist is the fact that the works on display and up for grabs at this Strauss &Co. auction sale, is that the works span several years of his practice, comprising works he created in his early years to those he created later on ion life.
His early paintings were very much influenced by solid Dutch art making traditions, where he perfected the art of drawing (in that tradition a prerequisite for an artist to master before they go on to touch a brush to paint is to first learn how to draw, and in some cases taking up to three years of hard work on learning drawing before venturing into painting).
An example of such works that he created early in his career influenced by his drawing experience, though it is a painting, is a huge piece titled Rustenburg Kloof. He this work during his early practice. Rustenburg Kloof happens happens to be my favourite on this exhibition. And I am not the only one who fell in love with this one.
Many a guest stopped and stared at this piece of creation during the evening, before proceeding to view other art works on display. He of course created such works before he was influenced by the Impressionist Movement later in his career as reflected by the style and texture of his later works that are part of this exhibition “Strauss & Co is delighted to announce details for J. H. Pierneef: Close to Home, the third edition of its annual single-artist auction devoted to J. H. Pierneef, South Africa’s preeminent landscape painter. The live-virtual auction features 57 artworks representative of the many facets of Pierneef’s prodigious career.
The auction will be held on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 at Strauss & Co’s Johannesburg auction room. The cover lot for this much-anticipated auction is Rustenburg Kloof (estimate R3 – 4 million), a nearly metre-tall oil depicting a well-known geological landmark in the Magaliesberg range west of Pretoria. Rustenburg Kloof, with its sharp cleft, was a recurring subject for Pierneef. Paintings of this site are highly collectable.
“This monumental and museum-grade painting is one of the artist’s major depictions of the Kloof, comparable not only to his panel for the Johannesburg Railway Station (1929-32) commission, but other well-known versions in the Rupert Museum (1928), the Oliewenhuis Museum (1930), and the Pretoria Art Museum (1935),” says Dr. Alastair Meredith, Head of Sale, Strauss & Co. “Stylistically, it sits midway between the then scandalously avant-garde Rupert Museum painting of the Kloof and the gentle frankness of the Station panel. This important work has been in private hands and, until now, out of the public eye. It represents a boon for serious collectors of Pierneef.”
Featuring oils, caseins, watercolours, drawing, linocuts and etchings, J. H. Pierneef: Close to Home offers collectors a comprehensive survey of works by this master recorder of the South African landscape. The sale is bookended by two drawings made 57 years apart. Dated 1899, Violin (estimate R40 000 – 60 000) is an adolescent drawing of a violin in its case made when Pierneef was 13. Produced in 1956, Limpopo (estimate R70 000 – 100 000) is a preparatory sketch for a painting of the same name that was unfinished at the time of Pierneef’s death in 1957.
Much loved for his studies of serene wild places, notably in the Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga), the catalogue includes Acacias in a Landscape from 1938 (estimate (R1.8 -2.4 million) and Bushveld Landscape with Trees from 1942 (estimate R1 – 1.5 million). These mature works, which in the words of Walter Battiss were the first to find beauty in the high plateau, built on Pierneef’s ceaseless experimentation in the 1920s.
J. H. Pierneef: Close to Home includes particularly attractive examples of the artist’s earlier work from the 1920s, a formative decade in which Pierneef tested subjects, styles and materials. From 1920, Oom Paul se Kop (estimate R800 000 – 1.2 million) showcases his growing confidence with scale and colour. Painted in oil two years later, Bushveld Landscape (estimate R1 – 1.5 million) is one of Pierneef’s early career masterpieces. A 1926 casein titled Landscape, Eastern Free State (estimate R550 000 – 650 000) depicts an outcrop near Fouriesburg and is a detonation of colour.
The catalogue for J. H. Pierneef: Close to Home acknowledges Pierneef’s interest in vernacular architecture and home life. Dated 1942, Garden at Elangeni (estimate R800 000 – 1.2 million) portrays the artist’s homestead east of Pretoria in a manner reminiscent of Hugo Naudé’s best Namaqualand views. Painted two decades earlier, Farmstead (estimate R1.2 – 1.6 million) presents an isolated inland farmhouse in an immense valley. Homestead, also from the 1920s, zooms in frontally on a rural Cape-Dutch home. The catalogue includes ten linocuts from 1920 depicting old and socially important Pretoria homes, four of which became subjects of later paintings.
There is a limited-edition print catalogue as well as an e-catalogue for J. H. Pierneef: Close to Home, which provides extensive notes and commentary. The exhibition is also now open for viewing at Strauss & Co’s Johannesburg offices at 89 Central Street, Houghton.