Anton van Wouw
The father of the naturalistic and Euro-centric sculptural tradition in South Africa, Anton van Wouw left a remarkable and era-defining body of monumental and small-scale bronzes. Born in Driebergen in 1862, and apprenticed to the Belgian sculptor Joseph Graven, Van Wouw arrived in Pretoria in 1890 (the same year, incidentally, as his countryman Frans Oerder). While in his early years on the Highveld he was engaged with architectural embellishments, he won a major commission in 1895 to model and cast the Paul Kruger Monument for Church Square in Pretoria. Other state and public commissions followed, including the Women’s Memorial in Bloemfontein and the Woman and Children grouping at the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria. After receiving backing from an investment syndicate in 1907, Van Wouw produced numerous small-scale sculptures, mainly of Boer and African figures, that were cast to order by the Giovanni Nisini and Galileo Massa foundries in Rome. The literature on the artist is fast-moving, with key recent discoveries shedding new light on the provenance and casting histories of many of the artist’s most beloved and collectable masterpieces.
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