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ART SUITE

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HERE, THERE & FORWARD

Landscape

Jacob Hendrik Pierneef

1886 – 1957

Artwork Details

Artist          Jacob Hendrik Pierneef 
Title            Landscape
Year            1924
Medium      Oil on canvas (40 x 50cm)

About the Artist

Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef (1886–1957) was a South African landscape artist born and based for much of his life in Pretoria. He schooled at the Staats Model School before his studies were interrupted by the second Boer War (Anglo-Boer War). As a result, his family moved to the Netherlands. There he studied part-time at the Rotterdamse Kunstakademie. Returning to Pretoria, he received encouragement from other artists such as Anton van Wouw, Hugo Naudé and Frans Oerder, and learnt graphic techniques from George Smithard. Pierneef later taught at Heidelberg College of Education and Pretoria College of Education before becoming a full-time artist in 1923.

About this Artwork

Pierneef remains one of the most extensively researched artists in South African art history, particularly in relation to landscape painting. His work has been the subject of sustained scholarly attention because it helped define a visual language through which the South African landscape came to be understood and represented during the twentieth century, although met with contention in later years. What distinguishes this work is the character of its brushwork.

While many of Pierneef's best-known landscapes are marked by smooth and controlled surfaces, the brushstrokes in this painting display a slightly rougher and more expressive quality. This more tactile approach and the warmer colour palette show Pierneef was engaging directly with the materiality of paint, allowing the landscape to retain a degree of spontaneity and vitality that is less evident in some of his other, more stylised works.