Piet van Heerden: Spring, Namakwaland - SOLD
Piet van Heerden
Spring, Namakwaland
Oil on canvasboard
40 x 50 cm
Signed bottom left
Sold - 2009
Born Pieter Gerhardus van Heerden, 19 October 1917 in Malawi
Died 17 February 1991 at the age of 73, Somerset West
After the death of Hugo Naudé’s wife in 1939, Piet van Heerden moved to Worcester to assist him, and studied with him until Naudé’s death in 1941. Van Heerden’s landscape paintings show the unmistakable influence of Hugo Naudé’s style - something he always aspired to stay true to.
Piet van Heerden is generally considered to be a typical exponent of Cape Impressionism, who with his contemporaries Gregoire Boonzaier, Terence McCaw and David Botha, established a second generation of painters in this tradition. The early Cape Impressionists drew their influences from European Impressionism, and the works of artists such as Pieter Wenning, Hugo Naudé and Nita Spilhaus show their individual styles adapted to South African conditions.
Van Heerden received popular support for his picturesque Boland landscapes, ranging from the Overberg wheat fields to the vineyards and farms around Paarl and Stellenbosch, and the Koue Bokkeveld near Ceres. He loved painting the semi-desert scenes of the Northern Cape and Southern Namibia, as well as the abundance of colour and life of Namaqualand’s wild flower spectacle during springtime.
In accordance with his wishes, Piet van Heerden’s ashes were buried high up in the Kamiesberg mountains, near Kamieskroon in Namaqualand.
Bibliography
Esmé Berman, Art and Artists of South Africa, Cape Town, 1996, p 472
To view the Piet van Heerden web page click here
To view the Piet van Heerden biography click here