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I eventually got to see the Pierneef Namibia sites in September 2024. They are views of the small settlements of Okahandja and Karibib. You pass through these towns on the road from Windhoek to Swakopmund. I’ll say that again – pass through. When I told my Windhoek cousin I was going to Okahandja he said “Why are you going there, it’s a shithole.” And so we come to a great mystery – why did Pierneef choose to depict these dreary little dorps? This is Namibia for god’s sake – how about the Fish river canyon? The Spitzkoppe? The giant dunes of the Sossusvlei?
Pierneef’s station panel of Okahandja. Its a beautiful painting, but a fairytale that had little to do with what I saw: that impressive mountain was little more than a koppie. The surrounding trees were nothing like the ones in the painting.
Even given Pierneef’s penchant for idealisation, this is a bit of a stretch. You can trace the ridges of that koppie against the sky. Two small peaks on the left, a larger more rounded one on the right. This is the view, most definitely. And unlikely at the same time. The acacias were hopefully putting out bright green spring leaves. But it was a time of drought, and a lot of the vegetation seemed dead. Behind me was the edge of town, middle – class houses securely fenced off from no-man’s-land. I walked past a man wearing a nice hat, gathering bits of wood. Otherwise there was no one around. I didn’t feel an urge to settle in and do a drawing. I considered the koppie. I had the feeling that something might have gone down there in the 1904 – 08 war. And yes, the historian Marion Wallace speculates that Okahandja was the epicentre of the 1904 uprising of the Herero people. The war against the German invaders lasted four years, drawing in most of the indigenous groups with catastrophic consequences. Pierneef would have known some of that history. The fairytale landscape seems to airbrush out the uncomfortable past. Is Pierneef’s painting a sanitisation of a dark history? Difficult to say. The Station Panels were adverts for tourists, so…..
The ghosts of the past. Samuel Maherero. Hendrik Witbooi. The murderous teuton Lothar van Trothar. Heat, cattle, dust and blood. I decided to head off to the Erongo mountains to escape thinking about such matters. I turned to go, and noticed for the first time the giant, bent acacia behind me, bearing ancient witness and enclosed by a suburban wall.
Winter in the Klein Karoo. I am walking through open country, towards the Touws Rivier. The beechwood easel is slung over my shoulder and little Cleo is trotting up front. I’m heading for a small cliff that I may like to paint. It feels right, moving through the stones and scrub, with the odd cloud scudding overhead. It takes a while to settle on something – I am spoilt for choice and can’t decide. There’s no water in the river, and the riverbed is what I settle on. The view up the riverbed, with the stones and the dark shadow under that acacia tree is what catches my eye.
I clear away some of the pebbles and start to inhabit my painting space. As usual I have no real idea of how to proceed. The main thing is to get going, so after emptying the tea flask, I lay in some of the darker shapes. It’s always this: big shapes to smaller shapes, dark tones first, hang on to the bigger brushes as long as possible. I have no further method, and after an hour or so I’ll be involved in all sorts of unexpected improvisations, fending off disaster. The difficulty of this plein air thing is all too apparent in my clumsy first steps. I cling to the sense that I can get this right – with only a vague notion of what that looks like . Whilst painting I’m haunted by images I hold in my mind, by artists who are both daunting and inspiring. Obscurely, today I’m thinking about a Nineteenth Century French landscapist called Frederic Bazille. The landscape at Chailly (below) was done in in 1865. Monet, Sisley and Pisarro, amongst others, were all experimenting with plein air painting at that time, but the full – on Impressionist phase of broken brushwork was still to come.
As I paint, a cold front sneaks in from the South. The light is much more diffuse now. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s kind of different to how it was an hour ago. That dog of mine has started wandering in ever wider circles, and so is my concentration. Time to pack it in. Maybe later on in the studio I’ll be able to work it up into something acceptable…..
Travels with Pierneef 