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Cape Baroque
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A distinct, localized style of 18th-century art, furniture, and architecture in the Cape Colony, or as it was at the time of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) Kaap de Goede Hoop, often associated with the German-born sculptor Anton ANREITH. It features ornate, dramatic, and curved elements, blending European Baroque influences with local materials and craftsmanship, particularly that of slave labour from the East valued as skilled craftsman such as Rangton VAN BALI, a carpenter, of the few identified such craft folk, the rest remaining anonymous to the historical record.
Of the style, Fransen (2014:1) says:
In Holland's [The Netherlands] tiny colony at the southern tip of Africa ... [a] substantial enough section of the settler population, though as yet no more than a few thousand strong, had achieved a modest level of prosperity, and felt that some decorative elements to express that prosperity had become desirable. Houses were given increasingly ornate gables or rich façade treatment and the occasional elegantly carved door fanlights. ... At first, these trends resembled similar features in the mother country, but at a remove, accommodating local circumstances requirements, tastes, materials and skills - of a different community in a different part of the world. All this soon became fused into a new and amazingly coherent decorative language, a 'style', in the way most styles are born. This ... style ... might perhaps be described as 'Cape Baroque'.
[See also Cape Dutch; Cape Rococo].
Buildings on this website in Cape Baroque style
Morgenster - Morning Star: 1786. Somerset West, Western Cape   |
Books linked to this entry
| Fransen, Hans. 2014. Cape Baroque and the contribution of Anton Anreith. Stellenbosch: SUN Media (imprint RAP) pp All |