Koos de la Rey

A drawing of Koos de la Rey (1847-1914) by the South African sculptor and sketch artist Anton van Wouw (1862-1945). General Jacobus Herculaas (known as Koos) de la Rey (1847-1914)y was a Boer General during the South African War of 1899-1902. After the war, de la Rey became a prominent politician in South Africa until he was accidentally shot by the South African Police at a roadblock in 1914. De la Rey was buried in Lichtenburg, where a bronze bust by the South African sculptor Fanie Eloff adorns de la Rey's headstone. Van Wouw apparently created this portrait sketch of de la Rey sometime in the early 1900s. The photograph of Van Wouw's sketch was taken by the South African art historian and lecturer, Prof. Murray Schoonraad (1932-1991) whilst he was compiling the Anton van Wouw Archive in 1981. 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 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 works became more popular, creating large bronze monuments and 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.