Farewell to Piet Retief

A plaster of Paris relief panel titled Farewell to Piet Retief by the South African artist Anton van Wouw (1862-1945). Piet Retief (1780-1838) was the President of the Voortrekkers (Colonial Pioneers) that moved from the current day Eastern Cape to the present day KwaZulu Natal. On 25 January 1838 he left his wagon train to negotiate with the Zulu King Dingane. This panel was created to commemorate this event on the centenary in 1938 but it was too expensive to cast in bronze and the project was never completed. The damaged plaster was part of the artists’ studio contents after his death in 1945. 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.