Walter Battiss, South African 1906-1982, Karoo Night
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Provenance :
Notes : Walter Battiss was a child of the Karoo. Born in Somerset East, on the eastern edge of this vast semi-desert, his family relocated to Koffiefontein in the Upper Karoo when the economic fallout of WW1 abruptly ended trade at his family's private hotel. Battiss and his brother, Alfred, were sent ahead to an uncle's farm. When his father secured a job as a bookkeeper in Koffiefontein, Battiss relocated to town. The young Battiss thought the mining town ugly. He nonetheless found consolation in the Riet River. In his book Limpopo (1965) Battiss recalls: 'It was a paradise of pleasures: swimming, fishing, boating, bird-nesting, hunting, boyish adventures, and dangers of every kind.'1 This joyous and characteristically sybaritic work evokes these youthful indulgences. Notwithstanding its vertical format, Battiss is able to conjure the wide-scale panorama of the Karoo with his horizontal brushstrokes. The green-brown sky with its sickle moon is also faithful to his description of a Karoo moon 'floating in jasper sun-dust'.2
1. Walter Battiss (1965) Limpopo, Pretoria: Van Schaik, page 10.
2. Ibid., page 9.
