Street Scene, Cornwall ,1936
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Notas : This early work by Gregoire Boonzaaier dates to his study-time in England. The artist’s father - D.C. [Daniel Cornelius] - the famous cartoonist, was strongly against his son having any formal art training, so Gregoire spent his years on leaving school, in his father’s studio painting informally with local artists. In 1932, at the age of 23 and very much against his father’s wishes, he set up his own studio. Two very successful exhibitions in Cape Town and Pretoria, enabled him to fund a study trip to England in 1935. In London, he studied at Heatherley’s School of Art under Bernard Adams, along with Terence McCaw and Freida Lock. According to Berman (1974:44), he also studied in St. Ives in Cornwall. It would be during this time that he painted this work.St. Ives, with its very particular quality of light, its south-facing loft spaces and its picturesque fishing-village quaintness became a popular destination for artists from the 1880s onwards. Although the St. Ives School of painting was only established in 1938, after Boonzaaier left England, the St. Ives Society of Artists would have been active during Boonzaaier’s time in the village.This is a typical seaside village scene which follows the conventions of contemporary Cornish photographs and postcard illustrations. A figure in a doorway draws the viewer’s eye into pictorial depth while a mother and child inhabit the central street space. The higgledy-piggledy houses and cottages, all of differing heights, materials and angles as well as the varying street levels are typical of small English fishing villages with their harbour walls. Two seagulls on the tree in the background and three flying in the sky, further emphasize the seaside location. While Boonzaaier is clearly experimenting with the structural devices of the angles and planes of gables, walls and bricked embankment in the foreground, he is also exploring a painterly effect, with loose brushwork, scumbling technique, and contrasting areas of quite thick impasto and canvas left bare.
Liz Delmont
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