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(b Cobham, Kent, June 9, 1862; d Cobham, Feb 4, 1946).

English architect and writer, also active in South Africa and India. He was articled to a cousin, Arthur Baker, a former assistant of George Gilbert Scott I, in 1879 and attended classes at the Architectural Association and Royal Academy Schools before joining the office of George & Peto in London (1882), where he first met and befriended Edwin Lutyens. Baker set up in independent practice in 1890 but moved to South Africa in 1892 to join his brother Lionel Baker. In Cape Town he met Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, who directed his attention to the traditional European Cape Dutch architecture of the province and asked him to rebuild his house Groote Schuur (1893, 1897), now the official residence of South Africa’s prime ministers. Applying the ideas of the English Arts and Crafts movement to local conditions, Baker produced a series of houses, both in the Cape Province and the Transvaal, which were instrumental in the revival of Cape Dutch architecture. In ...

[Ben Youseph Nathan, Esther Zeghdda]

(b London, Nov 21, 1869; d Brooklyn, NY, Nov 27, 1933).

American photographer. Born Esther Zeghdda Ben Youseph Nathan to a German mother and an Algerian father, she immigrated to the United States in 1895. She worked as a milliner in New York before opening a photographic portrait studio in 1897. Her ‘gallery of illustrious Americans’ featured actresses, politicians, and fashionable socialites, including President Theodore Roosevelt, author Edith Wharton, artist William Merritt Chase, and actress Julia Marlowe. Ben-Yusuf also created Pictorialist-inspired artwork like The Odor of Pomegranates (1899; see fig.), an allegory informed by the myth of Persephone and the idea of the pomegranate as a tantalizing but odourless fruit. Ben-Yusuf was included in an exhibition organized by the Linked Ring, Brotherhood of the in London in 1896 and continued to exhibit in the group’s annual exhibitions until 1902. Her photographs were exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1898 and at the Camera Club of New York in ...

(b Cahirconlish, Co. Limerick, Aug 28, 1847; d Penzance, Cornwall, June 22, 1926).

Irish painter and writer. He attempted various professions, including diamond-mining and journalism in South Africa (1872–7), before becoming an artist. At the Koninklijke Academie, Antwerp (1878–80), under Charles Verlat, in Paris (1881–4) as a student of Carolus-Duran and in Venice (1885) Garstin became friends with future Newlyn school painters. Saint’s House and Field, Tangier (1885; Plymouth, City Mus. & A.G.), a small oil panel painted en plein air, exemplifies both the medium and the suggestive approach he preferred throughout his career. In 1886 he married and settled in Newlyn and then Penzance (1890). Financial pressures forced him to produce portraits and such large anecdotal genre scenes as Her Signal (exh. RA 1892; Truro, Co. Mus. & A.G.) for which his talents for simplified forms and surface design were less well suited. Though he exhibited widely, he received little recognition. Garstin supplemented his income by writing, lecturing, teaching and, from ...

(b Johannesburg, Sept 7, 1938).

American architect, teacher, historian, and writer of South African birth. Greenberg’s quiet, gentlemanly demeanor reflected the time-honored traditional and classical architecture he created over four decades. His stylistic choices are rooted in research and aesthetics. His fascination with 18th- and 19th-century American architecture is related to its genesis in the American Revolution and the commitment of those architects to expressing American democratic ideals in architectural form.

Greenberg graduated from King Edward VII School, a private preparatory school in Johannesburg, in 1955. He received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1961. Unlike American architecture schools of the period, his training was classically based and included drawing the historic models of Classical and Gothic architecture from memory. During his apprenticeship, he worked with Jørn Utzon in Hellebæk, Denmark, in 1962 during the design phase of the Sydney Opera House. In 1963, he continued his apprenticeship working with both ...

(b Efon-Alaye, c. 1860; d 1938).

Nigerian wood-carver. Little is known of his training except that he moved to Ise to work at the court of the king, where he served as court messenger. He carved for the king of Ise as well as for other regional rulers and wealthy Yoruba families. At one point he had up to 15 apprentices in his studio. He worked within the conventions of Yoruba carving, creating standard forms: multi-tiered house-posts (see fig.), doors, divination bowls and boxes. Yet his treatment was innovative: some of his relief carvings were so deep that figures appear nearly fully round. As can be seen in the door from the palace at Ikere-Ekiti (1906; London, BM), he gave complex and active poses to these elongated, angular figures and applied enamel paint to his pieces earlier than most other carvers. His door panels are sometimes narrative, recording historical events and personages such as British colonial officers. He was known in particular for the attention given to the surface of his works, where hair and jewellery are clearly shown. Two doors included in the ...

(b Melbourne, Jan 2, 1870; d Cape Town, Nov 20, 1948).

South African architect. His parents were English, and he was educated in London and worked for a builder, S. J. Jerrard, from 1885 to 1887; he then studied architecture at the University of London (1887–90). In 1889 he was articled to Roger Smith & Gale, London, and he subsequently worked for them, for William Emerson and for Ernest George & Yates before leaving for South Africa early in 1896. He settled in the Cape, working for J. Parker, Sydney Stent and then for Herbert Baker in Cape Town, all in 1896. He became a junior partner in the firm of Baker & Masey (c. 1899), and from 1902 to 1905 he ran the office in Bloemfontein while he supervised work on the new government offices for the Orange River Colony. In 1906 he became a senior partner and, on Francis Masey’s departure in 1910, a principal in the new partnership of ...

(Edward)

(b London, Nov 18, 1861; d Salisbury, Rhodesia [now Harare, Zimbabwe], Sept 3, 1912).

English architect active in South Africa and Rhodesia. He was apprenticed to his father, the architect Philip Masey, in London for two years before entering the office of Alfred Waterhouse (1878). In 1887 he became a student in the Royal Academy Schools, London, and he won several prizes that enabled him to visit France (1889) and Italy (1891). In 1896 he went to Cape Town on a three-year contract with the Public Works Department, but soon after his arrival he met Herbert Baker, broke his contract and entered practice with him; the partnership of Baker & Masey was formed in 1899. Their first success was winning the competition for the City Club (1896–7), Cape Town, built to a classical design with Baroque gables and domes. Masey’s studies in Italy were a major influence on the use of the Italianate style frequently adopted by the practice, particularly before Baker’s visit to see Classical sites in Europe in ...

(b Alexandria, May 10, 1878; d Athens, July 1967).

Greek painter of Egyptian birth. He studied in Vienna under the German painter Karl Dieffenbach (b 1851) and first exhibited at the Boehms Künstlerhaus in 1899. His first exhibition in Athens was in 1900. From 1903–7 he lived on the island of Poros where he painted the frescoes for the church of St Nicholas. In 1908 he decorated the church of St George in Cairo. From 1909 to 1911 he lived in Paris, where he participated in the Salon d’Automne. In 1910 he received an award for his painting The Hillside, and in 1911 he won first prize at an exhibition of religious art for his painting of the Annunciation. He returned to Greece in 1912, living in Corfu for five years, before finally settling in Athens in 1917. In 1918 he was commissioned to decorate the church of St Alexander at Paleo Phaliro. In 1920, after a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Záppeion, Athens, he received the art and literature award of the Academy of Athens. In ...

(b Algiers, March 23, 1861; d Marlotte, Seine-et-Marne, March 1932).

French painter and designer. He began his career painting the Algerian scenes of his youth, rendering Orientalist subjects—such as markets and musicians—with a distinctive, unaffected precision. In 1888 he went to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Auguste Herst (b 1825) and Fernand Cormon. He exhibited at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts from 1890.

The discovery of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites, and a visit to Italy in 1894, led Point to model his work on the artists of the Florentine Renaissance. The inspiration of Botticelli and Leonardo can be seen in such works as the Eternal Chimera (c. 1895; London, Piccadilly Gal.). Under the dominating influence of Gustave Moreau, his work was also aligned with Symbolism. He became a disciple of Rosicrucianism and a friend of Sâr Peladan, fastidiously rejecting the modern industrial world and what he considered the excessive realism of Zola or Courbet. He painted magicians, endowed with a pure and ancient beauty, or figures of Greek mythology (e.g. ...

(b Bozanquit, Ont., Sept 27, 1860; d Palo Alto, CA, Sept 4, 1950).

American sculptor. Raised in Colorado when it was still a frontier state, Proctor’s identification with the West was a key element of his work. Initially known as an animalier sculptor, he later did a number of figural monuments. In 1885 he went east to study at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design and in 1893 to Paris where he worked with Denys Puech and (Jean-)Antoine Injalbert. He interrupted his studies a year later to return to New York to model horses for Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s General Logan (1897; Chicago, Grant Park) and the Sherman Monument (1892–1903; New York, Grand Army Plaza), but in 1896 with a traveling fellowship returned to Paris. He settled in New York in 1900, but frequently visited the West and in 1914 moved to Idaho, then Oregon, and in 1918 to California. Known for his western themes, Proctor was a well-respected and much-admired sculptor who resisted modernism and worked in the Beaux-Arts style for his entire career....

(b Plymouth, July 1856; d Cape Town, Oct 1922).

South African architect of English birth. He trained in England, moving to South Africa in 1877. After working in the Cape for several years he moved to Johannesburg (1887), reputedly the first trained architect to practice in the town. In partnership with R. L. McCowat (c. 1885–1925) he designed the second Rand Club (1893; destr. 1903) and the first Johannesburg General Hospital (1889). Both buildings were semi-classical, High Victorian structures with pediments over every aperture. They were characteristic of the nature of many early buildings in Johannesburg and elsewhere in South Africa, becoming a vernacular easily resorted to by architects of no particular distinction but providing the backdrop against which the work of more talented architects was evident. Reid was among the first architects in South Africa to develop branch practices. In 1897 Reid returned to Cape Town, leaving his brother Walter Reid (...

(b London, June 5, 1856; d Durban, June 23, 1928).

South African architect of English birth. He studied at the University of London and was articled to W. W. Gwyther in London, then to J. McVicar Anderson and to Robert Hesketh. In 1881 he established his own practice in London. He moved to the colony of Natal c. 1886 and set up practice in Durban and Pietermaritzburg in partnership first with Percy Barr (d 1894), then with Arthur Fyfe until c. 1899, and finally with J. Wallace Paton (1874–1948) from c. 1899 until his death. Street-Wilson was a prolific architect and designed many houses, shops and office buildings, but his reputation was based on public commissions. The Pietermaritzburg Town Hall (1893; destr. 1898) was his first major work: a modest, two-storey ‘Free Renaissance design’ using the characteristic salmon-pink brick of the area. Invited to design a new structure after its destruction by fire, he created a florid three-storey version using imported plaster mouldings and cast iron. Other successful designs in this style include Scott’s Theatre (...

(b Cheltenham, Glos, March 6, 1865; d Johannesburg, April 11, 1931).

South African architect of English birth. He trained as an ecclesiastical architect in Cheltenham and after a few years’ employment in London went to South Africa (1889) where he opened an office in Bloemfontein. He moved in 1894 to the booming mining town of Johannesburg where he did most of his work. In 1888 he passed the RIBA examination, and was accepted as a Fellow in 1910. Stucke was the senior member in various partnerships (particularly with John Edwin Harrison, 1870–1945) from 1897, with offices in nearly all the major cities of the country. In the organized profession (the Association of Transvaal Architects) he played an active part and was chosen as adjudicator of the Herbert Baker Scholarship in 1911 and 1913.

Stucke won several competitions, but his work is characterized by the large number of commissions he received from the Standard Bank and SA Mutual in various cities and towns, as well as from several department stores. Other work included churches, schools, blocks of flats and residences. Throughout his career he was noted for the innovative way in which he interpreted current architectural conventions and his sensitivity for the existing urban fabric. During the 1890s he conformed to the eclectic movement of the day, employing a consistent personal design structure and interpreting revival styles creatively, as seen in works such as the SA Mutual Building (...

( Willem Frederick )

(b The Hague, Sept 9, 1873; d Pretoria, Jan 24, 1921).

South African painter and printmaker of Dutch birth. He was a self-taught artist and left Holland in 1905 to take up employment in the Pretoria branch of a Dutch bookselling firm. He painted and etched landscapes and still-lifes during weekends only until 1916, when a group of patrons made it possible for him to spend three months painting full-time in Cape Town. He found the misty winter climate of the Cape peninsula, being closer to the atmosphere of his homeland than the harsh, sunlit expanses of the Transvaal, suited to his temperament and style. During that and later visits he produced enough saleable work to repay his benefactors and to continue painting full-time. Unfortunately his practice of working incessantly outdoors, regardless of inclement weather, also undermined the fragile health that had originally driven him from Holland.

Although Wenning revelled in the wooded landscapes of the Cape, he eschewed the picture-postcard sentimentality typical of the work of most of his contemporaries. His formats are small, but the flat colour planes and decorative, rhythmical contours—both especially pronounced in his still-life studies—are brisk and confident, as in ...

(b Wynjeterp, Friesland, Feb 28, 1839; d Sea Point, Cape Province, Dec 10, 1911).

South African architect and engineer of Dutch birth. He trained as a carpenter but became an architect and chief inspector to the Netherlands Railways, the service of which he entered in 1866. He gained wide architectural experience and supervised the construction of the Centraal Station, Amsterdam. In November 1887 he became a member of the Dutch Royal Institute of Engineers and was appointed Government Architect and Engineer of the Transvaal Republic in South Africa. The name of the post was changed in 1895 to Chief of Public Works. Under Wierda’s guidance the department built up a considerable band of architects and draughtsmen who were responsible for many public buildings, mostly in developing urban areas and bearing the characteristic stamp of the Republican style. Wierda became a member of the South African Association of Engineers and Architects in 1894. He left Pretoria in 1901/2 when the British forces took over the Public Works Department during the Boer War (...