Jan van Riebeeck

Jan van Riebeeck was sculpted by the Dutch born South African artist Anton van Wouw (1862-1945). In 1927, Van Wouw created a sculpture of the Dutch colonist, Jan van Riebeeck (1619-1677) for a competition for the facade of the South Africa House in London. Van Wouw, although one of the final three artists selected, did not win the competition. His work was deemed insufficient as Van Wouw did not have the skill to create the same work in stone as was required. The maquette was therefore never made into a larger sculpture. This bronze was cast by the Renzo Vignali Artistic Foundry in Pretoria after 1936. It originally belonged to a private collection of Miss D Fraay and was bought by the University of South Africa from a Sotheby's auction on 8 June 1982 lot 43. Short biography: Anton van Wouw was born on 26 December 1862 in Driebergen in the Netherlands. After school, Van Wouw began as a stucco worker in Delft where he learnt the art of sculpture. He studied at the Rotterdam Academy for Arts, but stopped his studies to join his father and brother in South Africa. After having a hard time as an artist in the early beginnings of his career of the then Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (South African Republic 1852-1902) Van Wouw was finally recognised for his work when Sammy Marks (1884-1920), a Lithuanian-born South African industrialist and financier, commissioned Van Wouw to create the famous Kruger Memorial, currently situated on Church Square in the centre of South Africa's Capital city Pretoria. From there, Van Wouw's art went from strength to strength creating over 10 large bronze monuments, as well as more than 100 other sculptures in his lifetime. Anton van Wouw passed away in Pretoria in 1945 just after completing his largest work, a figure of Woman and Children for the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria.