The Skapu Player

A 1907 bronze sculpture titled, The Skapu Player by the South African artist Anton van Wouw (1862- 1945). The sculpture is of unnamed black man sitting with crossed legs upon a rock, playing a traditional African instrument called a Skapu. This string instrument , is also called an uhadi in isiXhosa or a umakhweyana in isiZulu. The instrument has a long bow attached to a calabash which resonates the sound. The string is then tapped with a reed or a stick to produce the sound. The players upper torso is unclothed and he is wearing trousers, with no shoes. 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.