Jacob Hendrik Pierneef
South African 1886-1957
Landscape, Northern Transvaal
signed; inscribed with the artist's name and the title on a label adhered to the reverse
oil on board
29 by 38,5cm excluding frame; 50 by 60 by 5cm including frame

Stellenbosch Art Gallery.

Private Collection.

Mountain scenes were already entrenched as a subject by the time JH Pierneef emerged as a young painter and graphic artist in the 1910s. Pierneef's distinction emerged out of his commitment to depicting the landscapes of the recently unionised northern parts of South Africa in a thoroughly cosmopolitan and modern style. Shunning the fusty naturalism of revered Cape mountain painters like Gwelo Goodman and Jan Volschenk, Pierneef initially painted the country's northern bushveld and escarpment areas in a mannered impressionist style before settling on his mature style. Hallmarks of this celebrated style include a tendency towards graphic simplification and the use of what art historian Anna Tietze describes as a 'blonde' colour range. Blues, greens, pinks and violets came to dominate Pierneef's colour palette. 'Although black is avoided, contrasts between light and shade are very striking and … help to intensify the drama and clarity of the image,' writes Tietze.1

Pierneef roamed widely across the Transvaal, a fact reflected in his vast body of work depicting rocky outcrops and ranges across the northern province. The mountain in this undated composition is unnamed, not uncommon for Pierneef. The facts of its location are subordinated to the experience of a recessive mountain landscape seen from a flat vantage rendered in earthy hues. As the eye ascends to the purple apex of the mountain, the wandering eye is entertained by Pierneef's visible fabrication of a topographical scene into a vividly painted image. Pierneef did not entirely spurn the showy brushwork in his early landscapes in his later career. As late as 1950, he would produce impressionistic rural scenes portraying little more than mountains framed by clouds. This work is typical.

Characteristically, his storm clouds in these zestful and instinctual compositions are less architectonic and ornate, but rather a fuzz of greys and whites denoting a weather event. Changeable weather, though, was never an interest of Pierneef. 'Weather is a sum of temporary conditions; it is virtually a metaphor for inconstancy,' wrote Esmé Berman in a late-career reflection on Pierneef. 'Emphasis on that aspect of the natural scene would have been in total conflict with Pierneef's vision. The very essence of the South African landscape, as he perceived it, was the sense of permanence, of immutability.'2

1. Anna Tietze (2022) Iziko South African National Gallery, Masterpiece of the Month: Jacob Hendrik Pierneef, N'tabeni (1930), online, https://www.iziko.org.za/masterpiece/masterpiece-of-the-month-jacob-hendrik-pierneef-ntabeni-1930/, accessed 22 May 2024.
2. Sean O'Toole (2010) email interview with Esmé Berman, 1 December.