Strauss & co - 26 - 28 July 2020, Online

229 PROPERTY OF A COLLECTOR 462 Pieter Wenning SOUTH AFRICAN 1873–1921 Landscape, Pretoria oil on board 35 by 42,5 cm R500 000 – 700 000 PROVENANCE Gordon Campbell Tomlinson. Strauss & Co, Johannesburg, 1 November 2010, lot 155. Private Collection. ITEM NOTES Attending an auction of Pieter Wenning’s works at Ernest Lezard in February 1919, Gordon Campbell Tomlinson, an attorney at Vredefort, author, and a major player in the second Afrikaans language movement, purchased two pictures, including the gorgeous Landscape, Pretoria . He paid £15, a record for Wenning at the time. While Wenning’s debt to the artists of The Hague School is clear in this work, his Pretorian palette, with lush summer greens, creamy whites in the clouds, and the bright denim blue of the Highveld sky, is more vivid and dazzling. A sense of confidence and freedom comes across in the brushstroke, while exciting flashes of intense olive and terracotta punctuate the scene. A photograph of Mr Gordon Campbell Tomlinson’s sitting room – with the current lot visible at top left – that appeared in Die Huisgenoot , 25 June 1954.