An opportunity to collect a Peter Clarke at Aspire Auctions forthcoming auction beckons

By CityLife Arts Writer

In recent years the works created by one of South Africa‘ collectable artists, Peter Clarke, increasingly became a favourite with collectors and his works fetched good prices on the secondary market (at auctions).

It still does till today.

And luckily for discerning collectors who may have missed bidding for Clarke’s works that came to auction in the past. Some of his works are now back on auction, and if you have been considering collecting a Peter Clarke, this is the opportunity you have been waiting for all along. This past week on the 2nd of June, marked what would have been the 97th birthday of Peter Clarke  (1929 – 2014), one of South Africa’s most beloved and celebrated artists. 

Across a career spanning more than six decades, Clarke chronicled everyday life with remarkable sensitivity, depicting both people and place with a quiet dignity that has made his work synonymous with humanity and social insight. 

In celebration of his legacy, the upcoming auction Holding Time: Collecting Home from Afar: Works from the Dr Bruce Hoffman Collection presents two remarkable paintings that not only exemplify different facets of the artist’s practice, but speak to the personal and geographic landscapes that shaped his life and work.
Created in 1973, The Drinker belongs to a period of significant upheaval in Clarke’s life and a time of profound uncertainty not only for him and his family, but also for his community at large. In the months before their forced removal from Simon’s Town under apartheid legislation, many residents had already been displaced and the future of the community hung in the balance. 
Against this backdrop, Clarke depicts a solitary figure seated at a table with a bottle and a half-filled tumbler. His elongated form, lowered gaze and withdrawn expression lend the work a quiet introspection. The act of drinking, so often associated with sociability, becomes here something private and contemplative. While the motif of ‘the drinker’ appears throughout Clarke’s oeuvre, here it assumes a particularly intimate character, offering a rare glimpse into the artist’s inner world during a period of personal and communal dislocation.

If The Drinker reflects a moment of uncertainty, Landscape with Trees and Cottages, Tesselaarsdal, Caledon, speaks to a place of refuge and renewal. Tesselaarsdal occupied an important position in Clarke’s life and artistic development. Having first visited the rural Overberg settlement in 1949, he returned repeatedly throughout the 1950s, and after resigning from his job as a dockworker in 1956, he spent several months there each spring until 1960. The village offered him both the time and solitude needed to paint and, ultimately, the confidence to commit fully to life as an artist. The period proved pivotal, culminating in his first solo exhibition in 1957. Its landscapes, whitewashed cottages and pastoral rhythms became a recurring source of inspiration throughout his career. 

Often described as Clarke’s equivalent of French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin’s (1848-1903) Pont-Aven, Tesselaarsdal offered respite from the pressures and injustices of apartheid South Africa, while providing the setting for some of the most formative years of his artistic career. Painted in 1960, this atmospheric landscape demonstrates how deeply the village had become embedded in Clarke’s imagination and sense of belonging.
Peter Clarke’s appeal continues to be reflected in the market. Aspire Art holds the World Auction Record for the artist, having achieved R1 479 400 for the acrylic and gouache on paper, Lazy Day in 2018. 

Other notable results include Tesselaarsdal (1958), which realised R932 176 in 2017, Abandoned on the Dunes (1969), which achieved R853 500 in 2019, and Kom Huis Toe (1971), sold earlier this year for R727 808. 

The preview exhibition forHolding Time: Collecting Home from Afar – Works from the Dr Bruce Hoffman Private Collection will be on show until 17 June at our gallery in Trumpet on Keyes, 21 Keyes Avenue, Rosebank