Oil on board. By Nils Anderson (1897-1972).

Signed. (Not dated: c. September 1939).

Depicted here is a German cargo vessel flying the Swastika. (At the time the Swatika was the equivalent of the German national flag). The ship appears to be undergoing repairs in the dry dock at Durban harbour. Provenance: out of the collection of Nigel Hughes. I speculate that this painting was done in September 1939 on the eve of World War ll (The 1st of September 1939). Initially this ship was named “Hagen” and was owned by the Hamburg America Line. The ship was later seized by the South African Navy in Durban in 1939 and renamed “Ixia” (a South African plant of the iris family, that bears showy six-petalled starlike flowers on tall wiry stems). After being damaged by a bombing in 1940, it was repaired and renamed Empire Success. Ultimately, it was scuttled in the Bay of Biscay in 1948 after a collision made it uneconomical to repair.

Nils Andersen, South African 1897-1972

Nils Andersen was born in Drammen, Norway and immigrated to South Africa with his family as a teenager in 1911. His father was a skipper and joined a whaling vessel in Saldanha Bay before the family moved to Durban in 1914. Andersen initially studied engineering but dreamed of being an artist and enrolled in art classes at the Natal Technical Art School between 1924 and 1928 and then ceramics in 1938. He became a full-time artist in 1933 and taught art and ceramics at the Natal Technical Art School from 1942 to 1944. While not an official war artist, he was commissioned to paint the Durban Port and various warships during the war. Many of Andersen’s artworks hang in the Norwegian Hall on the Berea in Durban and some are in the offices of the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry – as well as in numerous private collections. Anderson’s subject matter was not only maritime, but also land- and seascapes, village, and homestead scenes, and even still lifes.

Archivally framed, 58 x 43cm without the frame. 69cm x 55cm with the frame.

R30,000