Strauss & co - 11 November 2019, Johannesburg

50 39 Jacob Hendrik Pierneef SOUTH AFRICAN 1886–1957 Landscape with Trees signed oil on board 46 by 59 cm R1 500 000 – 2 000 000 PROVENANCE Purchased from the artist and thence by descent. Pierneef’s favourite subject matter, the bushveld and its trees, brilliantly exemplified in these two remarkable landscapes, also happens to be the theme of an exhibition held by him at the Lidchi art gallery in Johannesburg in August 1942. The paintings on that exhibition, composed mainly of an interesting array of his characteristic thorn trees, were described as ‘Patriarchs of the Bushveld’. 1 The present two lots are pictures one could walk into and explore; they are the bushveld. ‘He is teaching us to see, understand and appreciate the rolling miles of veld with the blue mountains in the distance, the strange almost fantastic trees that dot the landscape and the innumerable beauties of our land’said Justice Minister Tielman Roos at the opening of one of Pierneef’s exhibitions. 2 The imposing thorn trees, the billowing cumulus clouds and soft mountain ranges take their place in each of these two landscapes as if by preordained design. Pierneef’s organising genius has grasped the landscape so thoroughly that the inner pattern of each of these two landscapes has emerged. ‘Bury me under a camelthorn tree’, he once said, ‘with its straight, manly character guarding me and its roots deep in the soil of Africa. 3