Visiting the countryside that inspired Pierneef brings home why he’s arguably South Africa’s greatest painter.
I approach an electric perimeter fence with my camera. Beyond the wire is a vineyard, whitewashed buildings and a pair of soaring peaks. It’s the scene depicted by Pierneef in his Peaks seen from Lanzerac. I lean forward to photograph it just right and accidentally touch a wire with my left hand. ZZZik! A short time later I land back on my flip-flops, feeling as though I’ve been kicked hard in the back – and convinced the fence is operating just fine.
Pierneef’s painting shows a copse of massive bluegums rising over the winelands and dwarfing the Lanzerac homestead. Today there’s no sign of the trees. I also notice that the buildings he depicted have been replaced by a hotel and spa. And when I go tramping through the vineyard, trying to line up the mountains as they are in Pierneef’s Peaks, the vines are twice as tall as I am (unlike in the painting).
Pierneef chose the now-vanished trees to portray the magnificence of the landscape, but I’m not sure if it succeeds. However, his fairy-tale image of Table Mountain – seen through tall pine trees – is an immaculate portrayal of a ‘monumental’ South African scene.
The foreground is bare soil in shadow. From there the viewer’s eye is drawn through endless middle ground to the impossibly sheer slopes of the mountain, its top pushing clear through a raft of clouds. Nowadays the same scene shows fewer trees and the shoulders of Table Mountain are cut with ribbons of tar and urban sprawl, but it’s still possible to stand at the last remaining trees on Signal Hill and look back at the mountain and imagine what Pierneef saw.
It’s worth noting that if Tinus de jongh, my great-grandfather; painted the heart of South Africa’s landscapes flush with sentimentality, then Pierneef painted their soul in all its glory. (The landscape has always been the main subject for the greatest South African artists.)
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