Pierneef auction includes Namibian works
Close to Home
Strauss & Co announced details for J.H. Pierneef Close to Home auction – the third edition of its annual single-artist auction devoted to this artist, described as South Africa’s preeminent landscape painter.The live-virtual auction features 57 artworks representative of the many facets of Pierneef’s prodigious career. The auction takes place on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 at Strauss & Co’s Johannesburg auction room. Two works featuring Namibia are also part of the auction.
Pierneef made a life-changing trip to the then South West Africa in 1923. The seemingly endless horizons, the sense of isolation, the weathered and handsome veld, and the unique light – above all – moved him. During this first visit, and throughout the second one the following year, he travelled and sketched ceaselessly, recording beautiful vignettes for later linocuts and studio paintings.
The cover lot for this much-anticipated auction is Rustenburg Kloof (estimate N$3 to N$4 million), a nearly metre-tall oil depicting a well-known geological landmark in the Magaliesberg range west of Pretoria. Rustenburg Kloof, with its sharp cleft, was a recurring subject for Pierneef. The paintings of this site are highly collectable.
Featuring oils, caseins, watercolours, drawings, linocuts and etchings, Close to Home offers collectors a comprehensive survey of works by this master recorder of the South African landscape.
The sale is bookended by two drawings made 57 years apart. Dated 1899, Violin (estimate N$40 000 – N$60 000) is an adolescent drawing of a violin in its case made when Pierneef was 13. Produced in 1956, Limpopo (estimate N$70 000 – N$100 000) is a preparatory sketch for a painting of the same name that was unfinished at the time of Pierneef’s death in 1957.