Anton van Wouw

(South African, 1862-1945)

The Bushman Hunter 49 x 30 x 33cm (19 5/16 x 11 13/16 x 13in).

Footnotes

Provenance
A private collection, UK.

Literature
University of Pretoria, Anton van Wouw en die van Wouwhuis (Pretoria, 1981), p. 27 (another edition illustrated)
A.E. Duffy, Anton van Wouw: The Smaller Works (Pretoria, 2008), pp. 36-38 (another edition illustrated)
J Ernst, Anton van Wouw: 'n Biografie deur J. Ernst (Vanderbijilpark, 2006), p. 66 (another edition illustrated)
A.J. Werth, PIERNEEF/VAN WOUW: Paintings and sculptures by two South African masters (Cape Town, 1980/81), plate 43 (another edition illustrated).

Exemplifying the expressive detail and finely wrought textures associated with Anton van Wouw's masterly sculptural practice, The Bushman Hunter has become one of the artist's most admired works. The small-scale sculpture depicts a male figure in a contrapposto stance, his weight resting on his front leg. The hunter's head is thrust forward as if searching ahead, while his tensed muscles engage in the interplay of action and reaction characteristic of the sculptural scheme.

Declaring '[n]ature is the only method that endures', van Wouw pursued a naturalistic mode of representation rooted in his European art training (van Wouw, 1926: p. 9). Indeed, the artist's treatment of the male nude has garnered comparisons to Auguste Rodin's John the Baptist (preaching) (1877-1878), asserting the influence of the French sculptor on van Wouw who had encountered his work while a student at the Academie van Beeldende Kunsten in Rotterdam. Such impetus towards realism represented by The Bushman Hunter positioned the artist at the forefront of the Western sculptural tradition in South Africa.

The artist's pursuit of realism is further evidenced in his decision to use highly skilled European foundries to produce his bronzes. He favoured two workshops based in Rome that had developed strong reputations for fine craftsmanship: Galileo Massa and Giovanni Nisini. An inscription to the base of the present sculpture asserts that it was produced by the Nisini foundry. The accomplished casting process highlights van Wouw's masterly approach to capturing the minutiae of the subject's physicality: each forehead wrinkle, fold of skin, and curl upon the head of the hunter are finely articulated in bronze.

Van Wouw worked from life, exercising a keen perceptiveness that allowed him to powerfully capture his subjects in diverse moods and situations. Following his emigration from the Netherlands to South Africa in 1889, the artist found himself compelled to represent the indigenous peoples he encountered. The present work depicts Korhaan (also known as Kiewiet) who worked for a year as a servant in van Wouw's household. During this time, he modelled for several works by the artist including a large bust and a body cast of the Bushman made for the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria. Demonstrating the precarity of the lives of the indigenous population in this period, Korhaan was subsequently enslaved and taken to America where he was exhibited in the P T Barnum & Bailey Circus for thirty years.

Contextualising small-scale works such as The Bushman Hunter within van Wouw's wider oeuvre, A.E. Duffy opines that they 'do not only attest to Van Wouw's meticulous workmanship but also his profound knowledge of his subject matter' so that 'each individual work of art not only possesses minute detailing but also inner power and monumentality' (A.E. Duffy, 2008: p. 77).

Indeed, Van Wouw understood his small sculptures to be a vital part of his oeuvre. It was this aspect of his practice that he chose to foreground in his first solo show which took place in Johannesburg in 1908, following the first presentation of The Bushman Hunter in November 1904 at the premier exhibition of the Pretoria Art Association. Van Wouw's best known sculpture remains central within the artist's body of work, with other Roman casts held in the collections of South African House in London, the Van Wouw Museum in Pretoria, and the Rupert Museum in Stellenbosch.

Bibliography
A.E. Duffy, Anton van Wouw: The Smaller Works (Pretoria, 2008)

Anton van Wouw, 'Sculpture', in The Common Room Magazine (Summer, 1926), pp. 8-11.