Strauss & co - 16 October 2017, Cape Town

324 621 Peter Clarke SOUTH AFRICAN 1929-2014 Birds in Flight signed and dated 25.5.1960 gouache on paper 55 by 45cm R  –   PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist by the current owner. Two aspects of Peter Clarke’s distinctive idiom as a painter are apparent in this early work: his assured and vivid use of colour, and his graphic approach to pictorial space. The work was produced during a period marked by his focus on solitary, mostly working class black subjects, including washerwomen and labourers. But work was not Clarke’s sole interest; he also portrayed homelessness and indolence. The flock of birds that dramatically occupy the sky above the cubist depiction of rocks is a rhetorical device. Although familiar with the precise descriptions of English engraver and natural history author, Thomas Bewick, Clarke frequently inserted flocks of unspecified birds into his compositions. Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin speculate that the “hovering and swooping” birds that appear in his many early prints of birds symbolise a yearning for freedom and sanctuary.1 Clarke, however, related them to childhood memories of homing pigeons owned by his uncle. In 1992 he told Patty Hardy how, at his uncle’s funeral, the pigeons were ceremoniously released – and promptly returned home. “I thought about it a lot as an adult, and about the bondage of indoctrination,”said Clarke.2 1 Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin. (2014) Listening to Distant Thunder: The Art of Peter Clarke , Johannesburg: Standard Bank. Page 103. 2 Ibid., page 104. PROPERTY OF MRS JOS BAKER | LOTS 620-623