Ernst Karl Erich MAYER (1876 – 1960)
Collection
1953
mixed media on paper
18.5 x 28 cm
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Karlsruhe, Germany, Ernst Karl Erich Mayer made a name for himself in South Africa as a watercolourist. His paintings were mostly quite small and he had a particular interest in depicting the bush landscape of the highveld.
He studied architecture at the Charlottenburg Technische Hochschule, Berlin, 1894 – 1896, and came to South Africa in 1898, where he worked as an assistant land surveyor at Vrede in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province).
During the South African War (fought between 1899 until 1902, between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics – the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State), he joined a Boer commando, was captured at the Seige of Mafeking (now Maheking) and sent to St Helena.
In 1903, he returned to Germany where he studied art. Again, for health reasons, he returned to South Africa and, in 1904, South West Africa (now Namibia). Although he trained in architecture, Mayer never worked in this discipline, so far as is known, in South Africa.