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JH Pierneef, Mont au Sources. c 1931
Mont aux Sources. Not the usual view of the famed Amphitheatre, but a view taken from deep down in the Thukela Gorge. On the map, an 8 to 10k roundabout walk from Tendele bungalows. On a fine morning, I strode out manfully. OK, I set out, slowly. For the last two decades, I’ve been bizarrely plagued by chronic fatigue syndrome. Walking -as we normally know it- has been a bit of a challenge, and this was a big walk in my book. But I figured if I walked really slowly I could do it. In my bag, I had an A4 size sketchbook, pencils, a watercolour kit, digital camera, phone, water, boerewors, a boiled egg, salt, and some cherries from Ficksburg. I also had a sachet of D- Ribose, a magic sugar that is supposed to support the mitochondria, those little energy factories in our cells.
The landscape is splendid, invigorating. It’s no co-incidence that landscape painting took off in the late 1700s just as people were losing their religion. For the new agnostics, the spiritual path went to Nature rather than the Church. Landscape painting will, at some stage, make you ponder forces larger than yourself. Aside from the sheer scale of things, there’s non- human time. Away from our usual distractions, a day can be a very long thing as the sun works its way over the 150 million -year -old cliffs. Even in Pierneef’s time, Nature was seen as eternal, proof of an Almighty. But in the 21st century, with the global population around 7 billion hungry grasping Sapiens, Nature is fragile and threatened in all sorts of ways.
Along the path there were plenty of pale skinned European hikers, sunning themselves in the African Alps. One of them was a German called Mark Muller who offered to send me a pic if he found the Pierneef site.
Greetings from the North!
I ambled on, making sketches along the way. But two and half hours in, there were still plenty of hills to walk around before the fabled Gorge. I turned back, knowing that I was frustratingly close but also with relief. I was getting way out of my league. A week later, I got this photo from Mr Muller. See how those hills on the right match the original Pierneef? Yes, this was the site. Now I’ll have to get back there somehow. Anybody got any steroids?
The oil painting is “Good day Monsieur Courbet.” by Gustave Courbet. (1854)
And so to the three Pierneef KZN sites. A quick online search reveals that Pierneef’s panel simply titled “Drakensberg” is the Sentinel, that jutting lump of basalt to the right of the Amphitheatre. The second mountain painting is Mont aux Sources. The way to get to these is through Tendele camp, in the Royal Natal National Park. A world heritage site and a little piece of heaven if ever there was one. Nice one, Henk. On your trail I’ve been down some crooked paths, spent strange nights in bad taste game lodges, trawled the nether regions of no – hope Noupoort and been kicked off disused mining property in Joburg. I’ve met fierce frontiersmen in Louis Trichardt and I’ve sat pondering the elegance of your handwriting in the National Archives. I’ve seen your serene landscapes rudely interrupted by four lane highways, hooting trucks, Tuscan townhouses and the rolling carnival of modernity that is South Africa today. Sometimes the trail runs cold. Others, its like going through a wormhole, back into a lost world.
JH Pierneef
Drakensberg 127x 140 cm
c1931
Pierneef’s Drakensberg is indeed a place of dragons, brooding and mysterious. Making tea on a bright morning I looked around and seated on the breakfast table behind me was a large chacma baboon. I ordered him out and he left the bungalow clutching some canderel sachets and a lemon, looking hurt. Then he sat on the patio table and looked through the window at me eating my breakfast. I threw a jug of water at him. He gave me a very sour look.
Wat kyk JY?
Later that day, the mood changed and heavy Pierneefian cloud settled around the mountains. It stayed like that for several days. I slept, I read, I made drawings of trees and starlings. No clear view of the enshrouded peaks. Happily, I prolonged my stay. As many an Alpine wanderer has noted, the mountains have the effect of expanding the soul. Rich fragrances float on the breeze. Notes on a drawing list these as ” honey… turkey shed in Pretoria….grandfather’s Tabac.” The high air gets into obscure crevices of memory it seems. When the sky opened up I drew and did quick watercolours. The foothills have a lot of grey and red in them, and the deep langorous shadows suggest Ultramarine. Nature is big here and very changeable, a visual feast of monumental forms. And never enough time to get it all down.
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Travels with Pierneef 