Strauss & co - 5 June 2017, Johannesburg

184 Pierneef painted a number of smaller canvases using a comparable viewpoint. Die Pieke vanaf Lanzarac (1925) in the Pretoria Art Musuem, with its vineyards in shadow, and the ridges and clouds painted up in similar crimsons, lavenders and carmine, immediately comes to mind, as does a much earlier, more painterly example that the artist presented as a wedding gift to a friend in 1923. But neither have the weight and power of Farm Jonkershoek with Twin Peaks Beyond, Stellenbosch , nor indeed do they conjure the same sense of sheer decorative delight. Pierneef was a master printmaker, having been guided in the medium by George Smithard, Pieter Wenning and Frans Oerder, and there is a controlled, graphic element, and a search for essential form, evident in many of his milestone paintings, including the present lot. The Twin Peaks in the painting, in particular, with their angular, carved lines and panes of colour, bears a striking stylistic resemblance to at least two of the artist’s well-loved linocuts from 1922 and 1925 (fig.3 is the former), as well as the admittedly later covers of Die Stellenbosse Student and Die Nuwe Brandwag (fig. 4 is the latter). One of the more memorable aspects of the painting’s composition is the group of aged, elegant, straight-trunked trees that frame the view of the homestead and the Peaks. Their dark, entangled branches that arc through the sky form a graceful and masterfully-carved Art Nouveau tracery that is accentuated by the rose, dusky light behind. The compositional choice had a number of precedents in the artist’s oeuvre . Perhaps the earliest are two stage backdrops that Pierneef designed for the production of Amakeia , a poem by AG Visser (1886–1929). One of these, Amatola , captured in a 1920 aquatint (fig.5), offers a particularly interesting comparison. It is also a neat coincidence that the stage-like composition from 1920 re-frames such a theatrical view at Jonkershoek in 1928. Works of this quality and size are few and far between, and a more dramatic, spine-tingling combination of coloured fragments in mauve, violet and electric pink could not have been locked together anymore beautifully. 1. See letter from Pierneef to T.M. Steele, dated 3 September 1925 (Johannesburg Art Gallery: J.H. Pierneef Collection); also see PG Nel (ed), JH Pierneef: His Life and His Works . Johannesburg: Peskor, 1990, page 67. continued from page 182 Fig 3. Twin Peaks , 1925. Fig 4. Cover of Die Stellenbosse Student. Fig 5. Amatola , 1920.