Kruger in Exile

A bronze sculpture titled Kruger in Exile (1907) by the South African artist Anton van Wouw (1862-1945). In 1907 Van Wouw was commissioned to create 10 works of art by a Syndicate called the Van Wouw Syndicate where the artist would be paid for a year to create works and after that be compensated from the sales. This work titled Kruger in Exile was one of these works. The work itself is of Paul Kruger (1825-1904) the ex-President of the South African Republic in exile in Switzerland after the Republic lost the South African War (1899-1902) against the British Empire. This sculpture is a posthumous bronze cast from the Morris Singer Foundry in Basingstoke England done in 1976. 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.