Strauss & co - 13 November 2017, Johannesburg

23 2 Jacob Hendrik Pierneef SOUTH AFRICAN 1886–1957 Lac d’amour, Brugge signed and inscribed with the title charcoal and gouache on paper laid down on card 30 by 47 cm R50 000 – 70 000 The proceeds of an exhibition of Pierneef’s work in the Meintjieskop rondavel of Gordon and Dora Price enabled the artist to make his first serious working trip to Europe in July 1925. After arriving in London in August, and immediately selling a number of his linocuts to the Victoria & Albert Museum, Pierneef and his wife May spent the following months visiting exhibitions and museums in Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam, Paris, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Munich, Antwerp and Bruges. The latter city made a particularly strong impression on the artist, and he sketched or painted a number of its landmarks with extra feeling and care. The best known of these might be Beguinage , a depiction of the famous nunnery using electric greens for the lawn and windowpanes, and shadowy creams for the brickwork, but drawings also survive of the Goudenhand canal, the Gentpoort, and the city’s Market Square. In the present lot Pierneef presents a delicate, still, wintry view of Lac d’Amour – the Lake of Love – with its bankside trees and Sashuis memorably reflected on the water.