President MT Steyn

A bronze bust of 1917 of President MT Steyn by the Dutch-born South African artist Anton van Wouw. Martinus Theunis Steyn (1857-1916) was the last President of the Oranje Vrij Staat (now the Free State Province of South Africa) before it was annexed by the British Empire in 1900 during the South African War (1899-1902). The sculpture was cast by the Marinelli Art Foundry in Florence, Italy, 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 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 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.