Montagu Girl by François Krige

Many humble folk of the Montagu district sat for Krige: domestic workers and gardeners, the librarian’s beautiful daughter, the butcher boy and Koos Kok, curator of the town’s botanical garden, with whom he loved discussing the local flora. The seventies and eighties saw a great flowering of portraits. Krige has a penetrating intimacy and he depicts a calmness – even sanctity – in his subjects, who are almost always seated meditatively alone, never in a group. His studies of facial expressions give an implicit narrative and psychologi­cal dimension. Some subjects, such as a local lad called Fanie, sat for him many times and recur in both drawings and oils over an extended period. – Justin Fox, 2013