THE WATERBERG PAINTED BY JACOBUS HENDRIK PIERNEEF

 

 

JACOBUS HENDRIK PIERNEEF (1886-1957)
The Waterberg (1, 830 m - 6, 003 ft)
South Africa (Limpopo)

In Bushveld, 1942, watercolor

The Mountains 

The Waterberg (1,830 m - 6,003 ft) (Thaba Meetse) is a mountainous massif of approximately 654,033 hectare in north Limpopo Province, South Africa. The average height of the mountain range is 600 m with a few peaks rising up to 2000 m above sea level. Vaalwater town is located just north of the mountain range. The extensive rock formation was shaped by hundreds of millions of years of riverine erosion to yield diverse bluff and butte landform. The ecosystem can be characterised as a dry deciduous forest or Bushveld. Within the Waterberg there are archaeological finds dating to the Stone Age, and nearby are early evolutionary finds related to the origin of humans. Waterberg is the first region in the northern part of South Africa to be named as a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO.

The painter
Jacobus Hendrik (Henk) Pierneef (usually referred to as Pierneef) was a South African landscape artist, generally considered to be one of the best of the old South African masters. His distinctive style is widely recognized and his work was greatly influenced by the South African landscape.
Most of his landscapes were of the South African highveld, which provided a lifelong source of inspiration for him. Pierneef's style was to reduce and simplify the landscape to geometric structures, using flat planes, lines and colour to present the harmony and order in nature. This resulted in formalised, ordered and often-monumental view of the South African landscape, uninhabited and with dramatic light and colour.
Pierneef's work can be seen worldwide in many private, corporate and public collections, including the Africana Museum, Durban Art Gallery, Johannesburg Art Gallery, King George VI Art Gallery, Pierneef Museum and the Pretoria Art Gallery.

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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau