Flora Wirgman
Cataloguer
Lot 60
John Meyer(South African, born 1942)Market Day
9 March 2022, 16:00 GMT
London, New Bond StreetSold for £19,000 inc. premium
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Helene Love-Allotey
Head of Department
Giles Peppiatt
Group Head, Fine Art, U.K
John Meyer (South African, born 1942)
Market Day
signed (lower right); further signed, titled and dated '21.11' (verso)
acrylic on canvas
102 x 132cm (40 3/16 x 51 15/16in).
signed (lower right); further signed, titled and dated '21.11' (verso)
acrylic on canvas
102 x 132cm (40 3/16 x 51 15/16in).
Footnotes
Provenance
Everard Read Gallery;
Acquired from the above by the present owner in November 2001.
Exhibited
Everard Read, November 2001.
Born in 1942, South African artist John Meyer trained at the Johannesburg Technical College School of Art before commencing work as an advertiser and illustrator in London. He later returned to Johannesburg where he continues to live and work today.
The South African landscape has served as an enduring subject for Meyer. Market Day illustrates two figures in a horse drawn cart driving away from a picturesque town nestled amongst greenery at the foot of a mountain range. The figures are dwarfed by the majestic scale of the landscape which Meyer has depicted in his signature hyper-realist style. The vibrant blue roofs of the clustered buildings echo the colour of the hazy light that shrouds the mountains behind. Juxtaposed with the complementary yellow and orange palette of the rolling hills in the foreground, Meyer demonstrates his masterly handling of paint to capture the beauty of the South African landscape – a source of inspiration shared with many influential artists before him including Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef (1886-1957) and Gregoire Boonzaier (1909-2005).
'One could say I'm obsessed with the magical properties of paint, with the process that allows for and unlocks the magic.' - John Meyer
Meyer's work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at Circa Gallery in Johannesburg (2021), the Saatchi Gallery in London (2018), and the Everard Read Gallery in London, Cape Town, and Johannesburg (2008 –2021). In 2015, Lost in the Dust – a body of fifteen works addressing the effects of the Anglo-Boer War – was exhibited at Everard Read (Cape Town and Johannesburg) and Bonhams auction house (Edinburgh).
