I’m on an odyssey to visit places that inspired Pierneef and my next port of call is Hermanus. Mist blankets the early morning sun, giving the sea a ghostly, silver sheen. While I wait on a rocky promontory for the sun to burn through, dassies scuttle around me. One is so tame that I’m able to hold my camera within a few inches of its nose. As the sun emerges, I realise that while the dark mountains in the background of Pierneef’s mauve-grey depiction of Hermanus are correctly proportioned, the buildings are larger than life-size.

As was usual for him, he removed all traces of human activity, something Tinus de Jongh was also in the habit of doing. Was this to emphasise the idea that the country was young and new and there for the taking? Empty and thus available? Certainly his image of Table Mountain elicits the idea of a benign, fairy-tale paradise, a kingdom in need of kings.

It was perhaps this idea of a biblical paradise on earth that gave rise to the name of the nearby Hemel-en-Aarde Valley. I travel there via the R320, the landscape quickly changing, with the Babilonstoringberge to the north and the Onrust River carving its way to the sea in the south. This stunning area is home to the Hamilton Russell Vineyards, one of the world’s finest wine producers. It’s hard to believe the valley originally housed a leper colony.

Pierneef depicts the valley in indistinct dreamy hues, the mountains heaving in a wash of blue that could be a turbulent sea. By now I realise that not all his paintings have his idiosyncratic ‘monumental architecture’ in them. Certainly, his Hemel-en-Aarde landscape appears devoid of any attempt to embellish or emphasise the original scene.

On the road to Graaff-Reinet’s Valley of Desolation, which inspired one of Pierneef’s most memorable works, I begin to see the similarities between his efforts and modern photographic techniques. I first made the comparison with Tinus’s pictures, but as I’ve followed Pierneef’s journey northwards, it has become much clearer.

The weather changes and as lightning flashes around me, I see that Pierneef’s vertical lines, arching cumulous clouds and curling tree branches are simply techniques for emphasising a scene. In the same way that a photographer; not content with merely reproducing what the eye sees, will emphasise a colour or tint the sky to make it more ominous, so the artist also has to, well, cheat, to make a scene speak to the viewer; to provide a glimpse of the power that lives in its ordinary, everyday appearance.

Electricity charges zap along the storm’s belly, but by the time I approach the Valley of Desolation shafts of sunlight are shooting through the cloud cover and a strip of rainbow burns brightly against dark, shiny- wet mountainside.

When I get to the valley and find the stone pillars that Pierneef painted, I immediately see that he exaggerated their height. He also added what is either a rainbow or an almost divine arc of light. But I get what he was driving at – the vast emptiness here, with the columns of rock rising almost magically upwards from a preternaturally desolate and flat Karoo floor, ever sulking under a sharp, bitter blue sky. Today, though, the sky has taken on the appearance of a purple, pink and yellow dome, a Sistine Chapel vault that envelops this sacred scene of space and rock.

From the Karoo I fly to Gauteng where I hire a car to drive through Pierneef’s major hunting grounds. Leaving behind the Cradle of Humankind, I approach the Magaliesberg via the R514. In earlier times this area was the scene of violent territorial clashes between Boer, Bantu and British. Pierneef’s paintings of it, however, feel lighter, almost divine, always showing the area lush and green. They have a sense of a fresh start and, again, of heaven on earth.

See how a tree grows, my child, look how beautiful. Find your own tree of life, then you will a grow your own roots

By the time I reach Hartbeespoort Dam the significance of the sandstone arch over the wall as painted by Pierneef is not lost on me. Its monumental lines – vertical, horizontal and curved – are echoed in the surrounding landscape, in the mountains, in the sky, and yes, even the trees. It’s as though the arch is man’s monument to the landscape, to the tunnel through the mountainside leading up to it, to the waters rushing over the wall towards the faded green horizon. This is the essence, the magnificence, that Pierneef was trying to capture.

A few kilometres up the road, near the nuclear facility of Pelindaba, I find the home of Pierneef’s best friend, Gustav Preller. It is at Preller’s rustic home, and later at his grave, that I see why Pierneef deserves to be recognised as South Africa’s greatest artist. A man is known by the company he keeps and Preller, a journalist, historian and writer, awakened the Afrikaner to the importance of South Africa’s history.

But it is the cemetery that, despite the noise from the nuclear facility next door; speaks to me the most. Five generations of Prellers are buried here, their graves having been relocated from the valley to prevent their being flooded by Hartbeesport Dam, and there’s something appropriately bizarre about them, lost and overgrown as they are, next door to the mayhem of a nuclear facility. It matches the restless irony that is the South African story.

Pierneef, unlike Tinus de Jongh, was born in South Africa but, because of his parents’ political affiliations, was forced to go to the Netherlands when the British occupied Pretoria in 1900. While in ‘exile’ he studied at the Rotterdam Kunstakademie (an experience he described afterwards as ‘priceless and unforgettable’) before returning to Pretoria in 1903. Seven years later he sold his first painting, to the art dealer Emil Schweikerdt.

Pierneef spent several years copying Bushman paintings from the originals near Ficksburg. He also witnessed the construction of the Union Buildings in 1911. Pierneef himself had studied architecture and its principles crept into his art, inhabiting the mountains and skies he painted. He was searching for order; balance and harmony. He painted with the eyes of an architect, and his work echoed the spirit of a young nation under construction.

Pierneef was no stranger to ordinary pain and suffering. It should be obvious to even the casual observer that he developed his style over a long period and not without some difficulty. During his early years of struggle he worked for a tobacconist, then did evening duty as a librarian, followed by teaching in Heidelberg. It was only later in 1924, when he divorced his first wife, Agatha Deelen, a woman 12 years his senior; that his art became invigorated.

Some might be surprised to learn that Pierneef, who had at least two extramarital affairs, also produced erotic art reminiscent of that of Walter Battiss.

From the noisy, forgotten Preller graveyard I head for Rustenburg in search of the natural feature that inspired Pierneef’s most famous painting. I meet Steph Venter, a Rustenburg local who grew up in the surrounding kloofs. He directs me to one of exceptional grandeur, an iconic, stark and solid South African scene.

At Rustenberg Kloof I step into a crystal clear stream with this magnificent cleft in the mountainside rising into the sky right in front of me. Even though I’m seeing it in the shade of late afternoon, it’s alive with light. A grassy patch is filled with buzzing insects – moths chasing each other and small clouds of dragonflies sweeping from one perch to the next. Brilliant blue kingfishers dance on a wire suspended in the sky. I venture deeper into this warm, lively place.

Below the walls of the kloof, I plunge into a cool pool. Submerged, I swim beneath a screen of falling water; unaware of the young boys who have slipped and died on the rocks around me, unaware of the poisonous spiders and nettles in the riverine forest. I realize the stream I’m swimming in is what has cut the great scar in the mountainside.

Immersed in its gentle flow, I remember the words Pierneef’s mother said to him one day: “See how a tree grows, my child, look how beautiful. Find your own tree of life, then you will grow your own roots.”

It was Pierneef’s search for the tree of life that brought him here in 1935 and I realize that his art – and all art – expresses the monumental in nature, but more than that, the works are our monuments to nature.

I fill an empty Coke can with the pure, fresh water of the stream and return to my car I make my way along valleys filled with platinum mines that suddenly seem both pretty and part of the scenery. I take a sip of the water and look through the window at the shining green and blue landscape as it slides past.

This is Pierneef country.