– Lien Botha
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Walter Meyer once painted this scene: a view over Burgersdorp. Then Ben Coutouvidis painted it in reaction to Walter Meyer’s work. And then Willem Pretorius did the same and called it Walter se View.
It is a tribute to Walter Meyer as a departed master of South African landscape art.
With the painting’s scenery and title, Willem Pretorius makes a statement about the influences on his work as well as the tradition in which he places himself. It is not a coincidental painting or title. In Meyer’s painting the sun is already low, the shadow of the hill on which he stands falls over the town, it is late afternoon, the almostdusky light is soft. In Pretorius’ view over Burgersdorp the light is starker, the outlines of the shadows are sharper, it is the middle of the day – most likely close to noon.
In the foreground is the Gereformeerde Kerk, formidable in neogothic style. This is Dopper territory (Reformed Church). Jan Lion Cachet was the first lecturer at the theological school of the Gereformeerde Kerk in Burgersdorp. He was born in the Netherlands and was of Jewish descent.
His parents converted to Christianity when he was 11 years old. He founded the theological school in 1869, and in 1905 it was relocated to Potchefstroom.
Even the landscapes here in the northern parts of the Eastern Cape, near the course of the Gariep, seem Calvinistic – stern and dry, with clouds sitting thin and high. Residents of Burgersdorp had erected a taalmonument, a monument to the Dutch language, in 1893: a classical marble sculpture of a woman holding a book in her left arm. With the index finger of her right hand she draws attention to the book. In 1901, during the Anglo-Boer War, Alfred Milner had the statue removed. The entire town was forced by the English to witness the execution of Piet Kloppers, a rebel who had sided with the Boer republics. Lion Cachet’s son was killed in the war.
After the war, in 1907, a replica of the statue was erected. The original sculpture was excavated in King William’s Town in 1939 – badly damaged, with its head and right arm missing. The original and the replica were placed side by side on the square. On the replica, the finger pointing to the book was eventually broken off.
Burgersdorp brings to my mind the writer and playwright Harry Kalmer, who moved in the same circles as Walter Meyer in Yeoville back in the day. In Kalmer’s novel X-Ray Visagie en die Vingers van God there is a shootout in the streets of Burgersdorp.
Pretorius’ painting depicts the architecture of the town: Karoo houses with typical stoeps and pitched roofs that were probably built over the original brakdakke (flat roofs) at a time when corrugated sheeting was introduced; modernist veranda next to the church with zig-zag pattern; three-storey clinker-brick building in neoclassical style; the Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church) building in the background. In Meyer’s painting of the town the NG Kerk building is entirely obscured by the spire of the Gereformeerde Kerk (Reformed Church). And so each artist has a different way of regarding the same scene. Pretorius’ work is a tribute – not hero worship. It is starker, sharper and more relevant.