The Dagga Smoker

The Dagga Smoker is a 1907 bronze sculpture by the South African artist, Anton van Wouw (1862- 1945). The sculpture is of an unnamed black figure kneeling down to smoke dagga from a hole in the ground. The name dagga is derived from the San word dacha, a name which was in common use in the earlier years of the European settlement at the Cape. Smoking of dagga was widely used as an alternative tobacco which was expensive. Van Wouw created the work as part of his 1907 series, works intended for the Anton van Wouw Syndicate, a group of 'art lovers' who paid him to create 10 selected works of his choice. The sculpture was cast in bronze in 1976 in Florence, Italy, at the Fonderia Ferdinando Marinelli. 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.