Classic Dignity

We always have a soft spot and a warm heart for Cape Dutch homes: the regal imposing facades with the gables, the blindingly white lime-washed walls and the very thickness of the walls! The gables in our architecture also served a practical purpose: if the thatch caught fire, the gable would prevent burning debris from blocking the door!

This is the main section of the Bokbaai homestead, a little worse for the wear, as she is not lived in, yet with dignity intact. We can try to imagine her a few hundred years ago. This was not a weekend hideaway or holiday house like those in Newport, Rhode Island. This was the homestead of a working farm, as the Cape had to play it's role as provider for the ships which would dock in Table Bay for a month to buy produce and livestock, not only for the passage to the East, but also, in the 17th and 18th century to provide food and essentials for the British experimental settlements in Australia.

I like to think that a ship returning from the Antipodes had brought little saplings of the Norfolk Pines and that three of them are towering here over the old homestead today! Do not take this for the truth, but from the imagination of a person who has just read Colleen McCullough's "Morgan's Run" on the early history of Norfolk Island!

A wonderful artist in Geneva has been following this blog and the places I have painted so far, on Google Earth! To Theresa and other studious people, you will find the precious small bay, the thatched homestead with its long extension wing and its small outbuildings on 33degrees 34' 15.70" S and 18degrees 19' 28.39" E. Welcome to the West Coast!

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O, Look! There is the Mountain!

Table Mountain is truly visible from almost anywhere in the Cape and its surroundings. On the West Coast, where it is flat, you can be in a friend's house, a restaurant or even my own studio and see a bit of it. You can drive from Malmesbury, Mamre or Melkbosstrand and there will suddenly be a breathtaking view of it. But we never tire of this marvel and will always exclaim: O look! There is the Mountain!

I am painting the main house at Bokbaai, a National Monument, and will post it soon. But I am first taking you around the back to the land end of the property. Climbing the slope behind the house, I saw a West Coast chimney and walked towards it. There I noticed a brave little corrugated iron canopy over the back door, with little chance of protecting the entrance against heavy rain (remember, I live close by and have first-hand experience of the winter rains here). The fields on the incline were greenish and it seemed as if the first rain had already brought forth a few clumps of flowers.

And suddenly the clouds lifted somewhat and there it was: that blue mountain of hope. To give Table Mountain a look of gentle purity in my painting, I spread a blue-grey, almost denim colour thickly. Into that wet colour I dropped layer upon layer of white paint until a soft fuzziness developed. This very plain picture is the result.

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Lonely, lonely

As the crow flies, I am only 8 kilometers from Bokbaai. Not by road though! All the soil around here is pure loose damp sand, thus the road becomes a challenge of driving on both left wheels, then sort of jump over the ridge and drive on both right wheels, all at high speed. Did I mention the rain?

When the road comes to an end you start walking over a small hill before getting the first glimpse of the house, over 300 years old and vacant. I hope I can express in my painting the total forlorn-ness of this first impression of a once majestic homestead. It lies a few meters above a little bay, which on this particular day was as grey as the sky, as grey as the open sea, as grey as the mountain and the crushed mussel shells with which the yard is paved. The three enormous almost black Norfolk pines standing sentinel, could not be placed better to strenghen the feeling of desolation.

This is only the small side of a very long house and my next painting will show more and relate some of the history connected to the house.

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