2 Presentation of the Bible to Jacobus Uys (April 1837) A2/A3 B2 C2 D N 2 Presentation 26 27 1 25 2 East wall, north-east projection (panel 3/31) 24 3 h. 2.3 × w. 2.4 m 4 23 Sculptor of clay maquette: Hennie Potgieter 22 5 Stages of production A1 W.H. Coetzer, pencil drawing, retained only in A2 (April–June 1937) 21 A2 Reproduction of A1 (June 1937) 6 A3 W.H. Coetzer, revised pencil drawing A1, h. 13.3 × w. 15.3 cm 20 (after September 1937) 7 Annotation: ‘Oorhandiging van Bybel aan Uys’ 19 (Handing over of Bible to Uys) 8 18 B1 One-third-scale clay maquette, not extant but replicated in B2 (1942–43) 17 9 B2 One-third-scale plaster maquette, h. 79 × w. 76 × d. 10.4 cm (1942–43) 16 10 C1 Full-scale wooden armature, not extant (1943–46) 15 14 13 12 11 C2 Full-scale clay relief, not extant but recorded in photograph; replicated in C3 (1943–46) 0 5 10 m C3 Full-scale plaster relief (1943–46), not extant but copied in D (late 1947–49) D Marble as installed in the Monument (1949) Early records SVK minutes (4.9.1937) ― item 4b (see below, ‘Developing the design’) Wenke (c. 1934–36) ― item VI. SEN. F.S. MALAN, 3 ‘Tweede toneel: Aanbieding van Bybel te Grahamstad aan Voortrekker Uys’ (Second scene: Presentation of Bible at Grahamstown to Voortrekker Uys) Moerdyk Layout (5.10.1936–15.1.1937) ― scene 2 on panel 5/31 ‘Bybel en Uys’ (Bible and Uys) Jansen Memorandum (19.1.1937) ― item 7.2 ‘The English inhabitants presenting Uys with a Bible before his departure’ Open Access. © 2020 Elizabeth Rankin and Rolf Michael Schneider, published by De Gruyter and African Minds. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110668797-007 28 2 Presentation Figure 2.1: D. Presentation. 1949. Marble, 2.3 × 2.42 m (courtesy of VTM; photo Russell Scott) Description 29 Description Two parties face each other, a male and female on the left, doubled on the right, on either side of a small table covered with a cloth like an altar (fig. 2.1). The group is united by the decorum of their dress and stance, although they differ slightly in pose, costume and hairstyle. The focus is on the two men at the table, facing each other and dressed in formal tailcoats. The man on the left holds out a large volume, its leather binding and decorative metal corners and clasps distinguishing it as a Bible. The balding older man on the right reaches out to receive it. Standing in a key position almost in the centre of the relief, this patriarchal figure seems to be one of the Trek leaders absent in the more general gathering of Departure, and indeed is identified as the elderly Jacobus Uys. Despite his not wearing a short Boer jacket, we realise that he is a Boer chiefly by his distinctive beard, long but trimmed to grow beneath his chin. The nationality of the giver is British, charac- terised by his clean-shaven face and wig-like coiffure. Behind him, a woman, perhaps his wife and presumably also British, observes the scene passively. While she wears a standard bonnet with a stiff brim, the older woman behind Uys wears a richly embroidered Voortrekker kappie with its deep, softer brim that shades the face. We can see that she is married from the wedding ring visible on her hand. The national identity of the two figures on the far right is less certain, but their close grouping with the identifiably Voortrekker figures suggests that they too are Boers. The rather conventional beard of the man at the rear may mark him as Boer, but he wears a frock coat and, like the British man, a bowtie. The same uncertainty applies to the seated elderly woman, dressed in a formal hat, gloves and shoulder cape, as though ready for church, also suggested by the small book she holds, an intimate echo of the presentation Bible. Her clothes indicate status rather than nation- ality, but her position, seated on a small cushion on a wooden trunk with a handle for lifting, suggests that she is about to travel, and hence a Voortrekker. Her old, intensely wrinkled face is the most sensitively rendered portrait in the frieze, and reminds the viewer that all members of the Boer community, old as well as young, took part in the Trek. We know that the ceremonial handover of the Bible took place at Grahamstown (then Graham’s Town), but the setting for the presentation is left ambiguous.24 The draped table suggests an inte- rior, yet this does not accord with the presence of a Voortrekker wagon in the background. However, there are no other indications of the out of doors, and the unnaturally flat outline and position parallel to the picture plane make the wagon look like part of a stage set, and reinforce the tableau effect of the composition. If the first scene made a formal occasion of the disarray of departure, the sense of decorum and order is even more pronounced here. 24 For Grahamstown, see Sellick 1904; Oberholster 1972, 138–146 (opp. p.154 a painting of the settlement in 1823 by an unknown artist); Butler 1974; O’Meara 1995; Marshall 2008; Raper, Möller and Du Plessis 2014, 163. 30 2 Presentation Figure 2.2: A2. W.H. Coetzer. Reproduction of first sketch Figure 2.3: A3. W.H. Coetzer. ‘Oorhandiging van Bybel aan Uys’. for Presentation. June 1937 (courtesy of ARCA PV94 1/75/5/1; After September 1937. Pencil, 13.3 × 15.3 cm. Revised first sketch photo the authors) (photo courtesy of Museum Africa, no. 66/2194F) Figure 2.4: J. Juta. Settlers presenting a Bible to Jacobus Uys. 1938. Oil on canvas, c. 3.35 × 9.14 m. Pretoria City Hall (courtesy of City of Tshwane; photo Helenus Kruger) Developing the design 31 Developing the design Comparison with the two versions of Coetzer’s drawing, the reproduction (fig. 2.2) and the revised sketch (fig. 2.3), makes it obvious how substantially the narrative shifted from paper to clay and marble. He portrayed a historically more plausible and less formal handover of the Bible, given to the Voortrekker patriarch Jacobus Uys by the representative of the English-speaking townsfolk when they called on the Voortrekkers while they ‘outspanned’ in the vicinity of Grahamstown, early in their long journey. This gives way to a strictly ceremonial image set up on an invented stage, frozen in relief. But let us first consider the alterations demanded by the Historiese Komitee on 4 September 1937: Uys receives the Bible. The English under Thompson came on horses; there were women in riding costume; there were no children with the English; show also horses; the boers’ clothing is too poor; the partiarch Uys (80 years) must be more worthy.25 In his revised drawing (fig. 2.3), Coetzer responded to the details of the SVK critique, drawn from anecdotes and oral history, but paid less attention to aspects that set the tone of the scene and characters. He removed the settlers’ children as required, eliminated the baby of the couple to the left and the girl in the centre, and moved the man next to her to the left in her place; traces of his original legs can still be seen. The tree and hills in the background of the first sketch give way to the requested horses. There are now two wagons, not just one, and, on the side of Jacobus Uys, there is an additional Voortrekker. But Coetzer ignored the injunction that the Voortrekkers’ clothing should be less poor and that partiarch Uys should be portrayed more worthily. Both features, however, are present in the colossal oil on canvas mural painted by Jan Juta in 1938 for the Council Chamber of Pretoria’s new City Hall (fig. 2.4). Juta designed a landscape with Uys as a towering patriarch in the centre, dwarfing the British settler in a tailcoat who presents the Bible to him.26 The ceremony is witnessed by a Voortrekker family on the left and two male settlers on the right. Like Coetzer, Juta chose a rural setting with wagons. But his wide landscape format provided room for labouring Boer figures and two flanking groups that might be interpreted as symbolising key factors in (Voortrekker) conquest: military prowess and procreation. The first is suggested by an armed group of Boers, with a woman attending a wounded man on the right. Procreation, on the other hand, is represented by an English mother with an infant on the left, although an 1820 settler rather than a trekker woman, identified by her dress and a distant scene of the settlers’ landing at Algoa Bay. At a time when the fusion politics of Hertzog and Smuts’ United Party was fostering a closer relationship between English- and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, she stands for the importance of women, both British and Boer, in the growth of the nation. Black women, however, have only a marginal role, seen in the shadowy individual with a calabash on her head behind the maternal figure.27 25 ‘Uys ontvang die Bybel. Die Englese onder Thompson het te perd gekom; daar was dames by in rykostuum; daar was geen kinders by the Engelse nie; wys ook perde; die boere se kleredrag is te armoedig; die patriarg Uys (80 jr.) moet baie waardiger wees’ (Historiese Komitee 4.9.1937: 4b).