Top South African art on offer

GREGOIRE Boonzaier’s oil on canvas, The Edge of the Forest, signed and dated 1985, with a price estimate of R100,000R300,000 will be among the works by South African artists at the Bernardi art and antiques auction in Pretoria on Monday.

Works by other leading artists include Irmin Henkel’s oil on canvas, Still Life with Poppies (R100,000-R150,000); a watercolour — Figures, Tree and Chickens beside a “Pondok”, signed WW Battiss (R8,000-R15,000); Carl Buchner’s oil on board, Trapeze Artist, signed (R60,000R90,000); Bettie CilliersBarnard’s oil on canvas on board, Portrait of a Youth, signed and dated 1940 (R10,000-R20,000); Frans Claerhout’s mixed media, Donkey and Figures, signed (R3,000-R6,000); Peter Clarke’s mixed media, Portrait of a Woman, signed and dated 1949, pur- chased directly from the artist (R50,000-R80,000); Willem Coetzer’s oil on canvas on board, Landscape, After the Rain, signed (R60,000-R90,000); and Tinus de Jongh’s oil on canvas, Landscape, Sunlit Palmiet River with Mountains, signed (R20,000R30,000).

Notable too is George Enslin’s oil on board, Bo-Kaap Wash Day, signed and dated 1970 (R25,000R40,000).

A special lot is Alexis Preller’s artist’s sketch book of 42 pages, containing various sketches, portraits, drawings, landscapes and studies in mixed media, pencil, pen and ink. Some are signed. This sketch book probably dates back to Preller’s instruction under Mark Gertler in about 1934-35 at the Westminster School of Art, London. (R20,000-30,000).

The china and ceramic section offers a rare Shelley China 22 piece “dainty floral” tea set, pattern number 11993/31, from about 1896. The set consists of six tea trios, a milk jug, a sugar bowl and matching teapot with domed floral finial lid (R3,000-R6,000).

The outstanding piece is a William Moorcroft orchid-pattern vase, raised and painted, with orchid flower decoration in pink, blue and green, on a mottled yellow and blue-wash ground. Impressed factory marks with facsimile and painted signatures (R14,000-R18,000).

There are six Clarice Cliff Wilkinson and Newport and Company “tableware” dinner plates from the 1930s in the Biarritz and Coral Firs pattern. The set comes with three matching side plates, all with a painted glaze on glaze shouldered landscape pattern (R4,000-R8,000).

An interesting lot in the silver section consists of 12 late Victorian king’s pattern silver dinner forks, Sheffield 1896-1901, by Walker & Hall, which includes 12 matching dessert forks, seven dessert spoons, six soup spoons, three table spoons and a butter knife (R15,000-R25,000).

Among Anglo-Boer War memorabilia is an Enfield cavalry sabre stamped 1898-1900 (R500R1,500) with proof marks.