John Meyer
Provenance : [Propriété non datée]
- Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg
- John Meyer’s reputation as South Africa’s most renowned and significant realist painter is unimpeachable
- He has exhibited all over the world, and is regarded as a modern-day ‘court painter’, commissioned to paint many official subjects and occasion works in the upper echelons of global society
- His immaculately composed painted narratives, either in the vignette and cinematic form he has favoured more recently, or in the grand historical narratives he has also depicted in many well-known canvases, can sometimes belie the skill and talent with which all his work is imbued
- This intense landscape bears all the hallmarks of the painterly photorealism for which his work is celebrated
- However, this work also offers an opportunity to examine, from a more aesthetic perspective, unencumbered by narrative considerations which surface in the historical subjects and in his portraiture, exactly how he goes about his craft
- A justifiable reputation as a master craftsman is here exemplified by texture, colour and brushstroke in a beautiful example of a meditative and technically accomplished work
- In paintings of this kind, Meyer’s debt, or at least reference to, Classical genre painters is evident
- There is a subtle handling of light in this composition, as well as a naturalist tactility, that turns away from his usual tendency to narrativisation
- The work on auction is therefore of interest in its singular focus on its material and naturalist subject
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