Strauss & co - 2017 Mid-year Review

In a 2007 interview, Stephan Welz remarked: “As a rule of thumb, when the crunch time comes and you have to sell, you are invariably always going todobetterwith a goodpainting by a lesser artist than with a bad painting by a major artist.” His insight has not aged in the supervening decade, as a number of 2017 sales of works by first- and later-generations moderns like JH Pierneef, Maggie Laubser, Erik Laubscher, Alexis Preller, Hugo Naudé, Irma Stern and Jean Welz have shown. The sale of Pierneef’s Farm Jonkershoek with Twin Peaks Beyond, Stellenbosch , a precursor study to his famous Stellenbosch panel from his Johannesburg railway station commission, was a showstopper. Painted in 1928, at the beginning of the artist’s most celebrated period, the work carried a pre-sale estimate of R6-8 million. The eventual sale price of just over R20 million is the second highest price ever achieved for a painting sold at auction in South Africa and a new world record for Pierneef. “The perception that there is a ceiling on moderns is fallible,” says Genovese, who knocked down the Pierneef. “The top values for blue-chip paintings by Laubser, Pierneef, Preller and Stern are still untested.” She also says that the stellar price achieved for Pierneef was preceded by a run of good results in Cape Town. Bushveld Landscape (1956), a late Pierneef executed in his classic style, achieved R2 273 600. A modestly scaled but supremely confident landscape study of McGregor circa 1929-31, sold for R2 500 960. JH Pierneef Extensive Landscape with Mountains Sold R1 079 960 JH Pierneef Hardekoolboom, TVL (Nilant 74) Sold R193 256 Collectors’ appetite for Pierneef is broad and extends to his rare casein paintings and popular linocut prints. Extensive Landscape with Mountains (1937) is a fine example of his casein work and fetched R1 079 960. A trio of linocuts soared past their high estimates: an exemplary work from 1929, Hardekoolboom, TVL (Nilant 74) , achieved R193 256 against a high estimate of R35 000. Collector interest in Pierneef is not without a historical basis. In an unpublished manuscript on Pierneef, the late art historian Esmé Berman, writes: “Pierneef’s landscape paintings were the most original and meaningful interpretations of the country’s regional identity that had been achieved thus far by any South African artist.” Ceiling for modernist painting raised 7