Strauss & co - 20 May 2019, Johannesburg

116 The literature on Anton van Wouw, South Africa’s key, early sculptor on the Highveld, has recently and dramatically been turned on its head. A chance finding in the State Archives by Gerhard de Kamper, Chief Curator of Collections at the University of Pretoria (UP) and a leading specialist on the artist, has shed new light on the provenance and casting histories of many of Van Wouw’s most beloved, small-scale masterpieces. Attached to the artist’s original will – UP had only ever kept an apparently partial copy – De Kamper found previously overlooked order schedules, as well as dated documents relating to the whereabouts and movements of certain plasters and moulds. These discoveries, particularly in the context of the extensive, preceding research on the artist carried out by Professor Alex Duffey, Chris de Klerk and De Kamper, give a clearer picture of Van Wouw’s career than ever before, and provide some answers to a number of questions that have for so long frustrated academics and collectors: which foundries, for instance, cast the artist’s work during his lifetime? During which periods did these foundries cast? Exactly how influential were Nisini and Massa, those two elusive Romans? And how many casts of each work were produced before the artist died in Pretoria in 1945? While a forthcoming article by De Kamper will reveal some of the long- awaited casting numbers, the fine, rare group of examples appearing in this catalogue, including the fabled maquette of Paul Kruger from the Rand Club in Johannesburg, provides an opportunity to present some revelations. Without evidence to suggest otherwise, it had always been assumed that the Nisini and Massa foundries cast concurrently. That is to say, either foundry’s mark appearing on a Van Wouw casting had previously given no clue about the date of its production. It seemed perfectly reasonable that over nearly half a century the artist had simply alternated between the two foundries depending on changing costs, waiting lists, or the preference for one master engraver over another. De Kamper has now made it clear, however, having uncovered a cache of order lists largely drawn up by Van Wouw’s major syndicate of backers, that the Nisini foundry not only pre-dated the Massa foundry, but that it had ceased production before Massa was even established. The earliest extant records confirm that Nisini cast the bust of President MW Pretorius in 1905. While in all likelihood Nisini had worked with Van Wouw prior to that date too, the foundry’s last-known casting for the artist, the bust of Dr David Draper, was in 1928. Revealingly, the first sculpture to be cast by Massa, the Laughing Basuto , was only in 1936. It follows, then, that Van Wouw used Nisini up until about 1928, and engaged Massa to cast his work from at least 1936 onwards. The change, one expects, would have been down to Nisini’s retirement or his death. This is confirmed by one of De Kamper’s most surprising and neatest discoveries: the Nisini and Massa foundries occupied the same Roman premises, the one after the other! Each and every Nisini and Massa casting therefore came from the same, no-doubt gritty workshop on the Via del Babuino (64-65), a short walk, incidentally, from the Spanish Steps and the Villa Medici. The shared location is a tidy coincidence, of course, and it also goes some way to explaining why the recent testing on the bronze alloys from both foundries revealed such close compositional similarities. In another twist, it appears that neither Nisini nor Massa were genuine foundrymen. Rather, Giovanni Nisini was an art dealer trading from his Via del Babuino front. He would have bankrolled the foundry, and released the castings under his name. Similarly, Galileo Massa, who in the past has been mistakenly referred to as Giovanni Massa, marketed antiques from the same address. It seems that he took over the foundry from Nisini in the early 1930s, and sold bronzes under his own trademark. The possibility that some of the very same craftsmen were at work for both foundries is as intriguing as it is unexpected. These revelations are only the beginning. While it has generally been presumed that Van Wouw only cast in three Roman foundries – Nisini, Massa, and Bruno, where the initial casting was done for the Kruger Monument – De Kamper has identified two others that the artist used in the city, namely those under the names of Giovanni Bastianelli and Oreste Buongirolami. With the addition of Prowazeck Stöxen Kunstgieterij in Leiden, LE Giessen in Frankfurt, Galizia & Son Ltd in London, and of course Renzo Vignali in Pretoria, the number of known foundries the artist used in his lifetime is far greater than previously assumed. The recent findings make the group of examples featured in this catalogue quite remarkable too. For the first time in history, Van Wouw castings from at least six different foundries will go on show together: the Maquette for the Paul Kruger Monument and Leemans the Postman (both Nisini), The Accused (Massa), the Bust of Louis Botha (Buongirolami), the Bust of ‘Onze Jan’ Hofmeyr (Prowazeck Stöxen), and the Self-Portrait of the Artist (Galizia). Casting a new light on Anton vanWouw top :  The artist c.1896, with an early maquette of Paul Kruger in view. bottom :  Van Wouw working in his Doornfontein studio, c.1910. Photo credit: Anton vanWouw Archive, Pretoria