An Old Cottage, Mowbray 1933

Gregoire Boonzaier painted "An Old Cottage, Mowbray" with oil on canvas. Boonzaier, a white South African artist, often depicted the landscapes and buildings of the Cape. In this painting we see a humble cottage nestled among trees, with a mountain visible in the distance. Boonzaier's work often romanticizes the South African landscape, but we might ask, whose South Africa is being represented here? The "old cottage" may evoke a sense of nostalgia or quaintness, yet it also speaks to the deep inequalities of land ownership and housing that were – and still are – central to South Africa's history of racial segregation. Boonzaier's artistic choices were deeply entwined with the politics of his time, a period marked by the rise of Apartheid. While he positioned himself as a progressive, critiquing some aspects of the regime, his paintings rarely engaged directly with the experiences of Black South Africans. Instead, we are left with an image of a seemingly untouched landscape, a space that, in reality, was fraught with conflict and injustice. Consider, as you stand before this painting, the stories that remain unseen, the voices unheard, in this depiction of the South African landscape.