Get to know the artist behind the Jock statue
The bronze statue of a leopard in Hout Bay, where he lived, is also his handiwork. The sculpture of Peter Pan at the Red Cross Children's Hospital in Cape Town was done by Mitford-Barberton.
Barberton Caravan Park will soon be closed to make way for a new shopping mall. It used to be one of the most beautiful and welcoming camping spots in country.
This holiday destination was previously a municipal facility known to travellers and tourists visiting the Lowveld. Before the park was sold to a private owner, it was also home to the bronze statue of Jock of the Bushveld which was later moved to Barberton Town Hall.
A photograph of Jock, at the original location, was published to promote the attractions in Barberton to the tourism market. It appeared in 1966, exactly 50 years ago.
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The statue was donated by the daughter of Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, author of the book Jock of the Bushveld first published in 1907. His daughter and only surviving child, Cecily Niven, later promoted her father’s legacy in the Lowveld by erecting bronze plaques and statues at places of significance to the story of Jock.
The statue was moved to the city hall in 1984, during the town’s centenary.
It was sculpted by the well-known South African artist, Ivan Mitford-Barberton.
Mitford-Barberton was born in Somerset East in 1896. He was a descendant of several 1820 settler families.
His grandmother was the naturalist, Mary Elizabeth Barber. He did his schooling at St Andrew’s College, Grahamstown.
In 1912 his family moved to Kenya, where he encountered African and Arab subjects that later formed an important theme in his work.
From 1915 to 1918 he served as a soldier in East Africa.
From 1919 to 1922 he studied at the Grahamstown School of Art and from 1923 at the Royal College of Art in London, under Henry Moore and Derwent Wood.
He returned to Kenya in 1927 and set up a studio there. Mitford-Barberton was an active member of the South African Society of Arts and taught at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town.
He designed the monument of Jock of the Bushveld in Barberton, a town that was co-founded by his ancestors.
The bronze statue of a leopard in Hout Bay, where he lived, is also his handiwork. The sculpture of Peter Pan at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town was done by Mitford-Barberton.
In the 1930s he designed parts of the exterior and the interior decoration of the Mutual Building in Cape Town, the then highest building in Africa at 91 metres. The exterior is equipped with a 120-metre granite frieze and with nine four-metre-high figures.
Mitford-Barberton designed the stucco reliefs that were placed in the pediments of the neo-baroque public buildings of Tongaat and Maidstone in KwaZulu-Natal.
These reliefs were an emulation of the 18th-century work in the Cape by the noted sculptor, Anton Anreith, and his colleague, the architect, Louis Thibault.
Where Anreith and Thibault modelled Palladian figures drawn from classical mythology, Mitford-Barberton designed groupings of plantation workers, and allusions to the Saunders family, founders of the Tongaat Sugar Company. Mitford-Barberton also undertook freestanding sculptures for public spaces and garden features on the Tongaat estate.
Mitford-Barberton created the sculpture of the Settler family at the 1820 Settlers National Monument in Grahamstown.
From 1947 to 1961 Mitford-Barberton was a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, from 1957 to 1961 a Fellow of the Society and a member of the Theosophical Lodge, Cape Town.
Mitford-Barberton was a prominent figure in the field of heraldry.
In 1947 the Cape Provincial Administration commissioned him to prepare a display of municipal coats of arms for the visit of King George VI. Shortly afterwards the administration asked municipalities to have their arms checked, and if necessary, re-designed, by Mitford-Barberton, to improve heraldic quality.
As a result, he designed dozens of municipal coats of arms, some of them in collaboration with H Ellis Tomlinson (in England). In 1956 he addressed the Institute of Town Clerks of Southern Africa on the subject.
He was a founder member of the Heraldry Society of Southern Africa in 1953. He was a member of the Heraldry Council from 1963 to 1972.
Mitford-Barberton wrote several books on the history of his family and the 1820 settlers. He was married twice and had five children, three sons and two daughters.
