Strauss & co - 8 - 11 November 2020

73 T O P L A C E A B I D C L I C K O N T H E R E D L O T N U M B E R 832 George Milwa Mnyaluza Pemba SOUTH AFRICAN 1912–2001 Young Girl signed and dated 47; inscribed with ‘Location Youth’on the reverse of the paper; inscribed with the artist’s name and the title on a Michael Stevenson and Deon Viljoen label adhered to the reverse of the frame watercolour on paper 33,5 by 23,5 cm R100 000 – 120 000 833 George Milwa Mnyaluza Pemba SOUTH AFRICAN 1912–2001 Makoti signed, dated 1944 and inscribed with the title; inscribed with the artist’s name and the title on a Michael Stevenson Gallery label adhered to the reverse watercolour on paper 33 by 22,5 cm R100 000 – 120 000 George Pemba’s career spanned 70- odd years, and his vibrant pictures, shot through with glowing yellows, springtime greens and spotless sky blues, or animated by a cross-generational cast of healers, dancers, poets, tribesmen, hawkers, jazzy urbanites, storytellers, dreamers and beer-swillers, are familiar, admired, pioneering and beloved. Having been encouraged to work in oils in 1941 by Gerard Sekoto, Pemba’s stirring, neighbourly and often profound pictures now hold pride of place in so many institutional and private collections. He is less well known, however, for his exquisite and early-career mastery of watercolour, and there is no more convincing evidence of the artist’s dazzling skill and touch in the medium than the group of works he produced in the 1940s and early 1950s. To be able to show together three remarkable examples from this period is exciting, revealing and rare. Although clearly talented as a teenager, Pemba’s only early patrons were his father’s impressed employers at the Cuthbert’s shoe depot in Port Elizabeth. Using photographs and cheap watercolours, he produced convincing portraits of these blue- and white- collar workers. After an appendectomy at Victoria Hospital in Alice, however, where the then matron noted his ability, he was introduced to Ethel Smythe, an art teacher at Fort Hare University. ‘She taught me how to mix my colours’, Pemba later admitted, ‘and how to use specialised wash techniques’. 1 He went on to train as an art teacher himself, at Lovedale College in Alice, graduating in 1934. Enrolled as an external student, and thanks to a grant from the Bantu Welfare Trust, he spent four months in 1937 under the sway of Professor Austin Winter Moore at Rhodes University. Working primarily in watercolour, his confidence and prowess grew immeasurably under Winter Moore’s guidance, and that year he took first prize in the May Esther Bedford Art Competition, famously edging Sekoto’s entry into second. While employed at the New Brighton Department of Native Administration in Port Elizabeth, and having contributed illustrations to a number of publications during the War years, Pemba made a career-affirming painting trip late in 1944 to Johannesburg, Durban, rural Natal, Basutoland and Umtata, recording en route – in assured, flashy, layered washes – the people, indigenous culture and traditional dress he encountered. His newfound raison d’être – to ‘capture the soul of the South African peoples in their natural surroundings’ 2 – provides the immediate context for these three beautiful, museum-grade watercolours: the artist captures a red-blooded Xhosa maiden, her belly marked, her headscarf carefully speckled, balancing a kalabash on her shoulder (lot 831); a young girl, apprehensive and bathed in yellow shadow, dropping her hands to her lap (lot 832); and a serene Xhosa bride posing formally, her eyes lowered and her beads glistening in the sun (lot 833). Perhaps surprisingly, Pemba’s work was introduced to the broader South African art public only in the 1990s, and he was given a much overdue retrospective exhibition at the South African National Gallery in 1996. 1. Sarah Hudleston (1996) George Pemba: Against All Odds , Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, referenced in text on page 25. 2. Ibid , page 40.