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Pieter Hugo, born in 1976
Pieter Hugo Naude 1868-1941 Still Life with Sunflowers In An Earthenware Jug signed 48,5 by 60cm Provenance: Mrs Adele Naude Exhibited.. Hugo Naude Retrospective Exhibition, Pretoria Art Museum,Johannesburg Art Gallery, South African National Gallery, Cape Town, 1969, cat. no. 34 Literature: cf pl. vi on p. 28in Our Art I, Sa, 1968 Pi. 31in Naude A. Hugo Nauta, Cape Town and Johannesburg, 1974 First to command attention on arrival [at the artist's Worcester studio] were a huge date palm, heavily fronded, in front of the house and a beautiful Cedar of Lebanon, planted by the artist himself, at the side. There was a garden with rockeries and a fish pond, herbaceous borders containing veld flowers and always an industrious gardener at work... Then there was an unusual outside staircase of brick with a low wall on which an earthen Jug - later always called 'The Rebecca Jjar from Jerusalem' by my husband - would sometimes be standing, filled with sunflowers or Leucadendron, still life works familiar to all to-day. Adele Naude, p. 8-9
Pieter Hugo
NAUDÉ
South African 1868-1941
A View of the Hex River
signed
oil on canvas
44 by 59,5cm
Following the record-breaking R1 559 600 achieved for a Hugo Naudé on Strauss & Co's Johannesburg sale in November 2011, a number
of brilliant paintings by the artist have emerged, tracing his travels and interests that ranged from South Africa to the Holy Land. Foremost
amongst these are paintings from the Krone collection, the family who pioneered brandy distillation and wine making on one of the oldest
family-owned wine estates in South Africa, Twee Jonge Gezellen, dating back to 1710.
Son of a farming family in Worcester, the budding artist's talent was recognised by Olive Schreiner who helped him to gain admission to the
prestigious Slade School in London, where he obtained a thorough grounding in art before going on to the Kunst Akademie in Munich to
specialise in portraiture.
However, it was the experience of spending the following year - 1895 - painting with members of the Barbizon Group in the Fontainebleau
Forest outside Paris that was to have the most profound influence on the development of his characteristic and much-loved landscapes.
Artists such as Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Jean-François Millet were seminal in the development from Romanticism to Impressionism
in that they turned away from heroic images, favouring natural scenes as their subjects rather than merely as backdrops to dramatic events.
Like them, Naudé was inspired to paint directly from nature. And it is this practice that gives his best paintings their authenticity and
freshness. The majestic mountains articulated by sunlight and shade, the bright river banks and cool flowing water framed by elegant trees
not only attest to Naudé's acute powers of observation but also confirm his great skill as a painter of vivid and pleasing compositions.
PROVENANCE
A gift from the artist to his godson, Gerhard Krone, and thence by descent
Pieter Hugo
NAUDÉ
South African 1868-1941
A Cape Homestead
signed
oil on card
25,5 by 35,5cm
Noted architectural historian, Dr Hans Fransen, describes this Cape homestead with its half-hipped roof ends as mid-nineteenth-century
Peninsula style.1 Located to the east of the mountains, with Devil's Peak directly behind it and partly obscuring Table Mountain, the
homestead would probably have been in Mowbray or Observatory. Hugo Naudé would have spent some time in this area given that his
father-in-law, Dr J Brown, lived in Mowbray.
In the opinion of Dr Helen Robinson, Cape historian and author of the recently published The Villages of the Liesbeeck,2 the homestead
may well be Malta Farm. This conclusion was arrived at largely by a process of elimination and because the homestead was an as yet
unspoilt example of the mid nineteenth century Cape vernacular. Unlike most other houses in the area, the thatching on Malta Farm's roof
unspoilt example of the mid nineteenth century Cape vernacular. Unlike most other houses in the area, the thatching on Malta Farm's roof
was drawn down over the hipped end, as it is depicted here.
Malta Farm, located along the Liesbeeck, was originally called Uitkyk, when owned by Jan van Riebeek. Observatory traces its origins to the
Koornhoop Colony land grant in 1657, which made land in the Liesbeeck River valley available to officials from the Dutch East India
Company.
It's possible that Naudé saw some of the many paintings that his contemporary, Pieter Wenning, painted of this landmark farm. However,
Naudé gives this painting his own inimitable touch - the air seems fresh, the light sparkles and the garden erupts with blue hydrangeas,
confirming that it must have been painted in the mid summer.
1. Hans Fransen in an email to Emma Bedford, 26 November 2011
2. Helen Robinson, The Villages of the Liesbeeck: From the Sea to the Source, Houghton House, Wynberg, 2011
Pieter Hugo Naudé (South African 1868-1941) TRANSVAAL HIGHVELD, SPRING signed oil on canvas
PROVENANCE
Donated by the artist to the Dutch Reformed Church, Heidelberg
Gifted to the minister in 1971 and
gifted to the minister in 1971,
thence by descent to the current owner
35 by 50cm
Pieter Hugo Naudé was born in 1869 in the Worcester district of the Western Cape, where he completed his initial schooling. Early on, his talent was recognised and encouraged, most notably by Olive Schreiner, the feminist author, social theorist and anti-war activist. In 1889 Hugo Naudé accompanied Schreiner on a trip to Europe, following which he enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art before going on to study at the Kunst Akademie in Munich and working briefly in Europe. Upon his return to South Africa in 1896, he would travel by caravan from Worcester as far as the Victoria Falls, spending an extended period in Namaqualand in the Drakensberg, which served as inspiration for some of his most celebrated works.
The pioneer of impressionism in South Africa, Naudé’s style was one of intuition rather than science. In lot 744 we see that Naudé was less concerned with the physical properties of light than he was with the sun-drenched colour, fresh air and natural abundance of the landscape with which he was surrounded. Much like in Transvaal Highveld, Spring, Esmé Berman comments that, “It is somehow always springtime in Naudé’s small canvases: the veld blooms, the sky is clear... He chose the picturesque views and revelled in the brilliant splash of wild flowers carpeting the general atmosphere rather than on defining detail. The charm of his works lies in their bracing, open-air freshness as much as in prettiness of content. A sense of composition, stemming from the disciplines of formal training, secures the underlying structure of the picture even when the scene dissolves in coloured flecks of sketchy paint.”
- Berman, E., Art and Artists of South Africa, A. A. Balkema, Cape Town 1974, p 203 – 206
- Borman, J., Hugo Naude (1868 – 1941), online, available:
http://www.johansborman.co.za/artist-biographies/naude-hugo/1