Save the rhino.
Collectors of the South African painter John Meyer will have a rare opportunity to acquire one of his new works next week, when a landscape that he’s donated will be auctioned at Bonhams on behalf of The Duke of Cambridge’s charity Tusk.
One of Tusk’s key objectives is the preservation of endangered African species such as the Waterberg rhino. Waterberg, an area of Limpopo province in South Africa, has one of the largest concentrations of black and white rhino a herd of 2,000 but they’re vulnerable to poachers, against whom conservationists are fighting a constant and expensive war. Meyer’s subject is the veldt on which they live, overlooked by some of the most ancient mountains in the world.
The auction takes place on July 21, during the preview to an exhibition of Mr Meyer’s narrative series of the Anglo-Boer War, ‘Lost in the Dust’. Each of the ‘Lost in the Dust’ pictures could have been a still from a film, but details are ambiguous, stories made more haunting through being only half-told.
It’s an indication of the enthusiasm with which Mr Meyer’s work is followed that all 15 painting were bought before he had even begun them and will eventually hang in a specially constructed gallery in South Africa. CA
