Renaissance reborn

If you look carefully at the background of any portrait by a Renaissance master — Leonardo, say, or Bellini — you will see set out in perfect order rows of trees, fields, haystacks, maybe a cliff and a church or two.

Often a river wanders off towards a haze of mountains, or a stream tumbles down a ravine.

These scenes of bucolic bliss were usually painted not by the master himself but by his studio assistants or promising pupils.

Although subsidiary to the subject they were rendered in perfect detail; immaculate, with every stone seen, every leaf in place and the light dancing off the water.

Seeing them is key to understanding the work of one of Kenya’s leading wildlife and landscape painters, Camille Wekesa.

For Wekesa learned her craft in Italy, where she was exposed each day to some of the world’s greatest works of art.

And it is this exposure that she rates as the single greatest influence on her work.

It can be seen in the meticulous detail of her canvases, whether small or huge — some 15 of which were exhibited recently at the RaMoMA, in Nairobi.

Very popular they proved to be, too, with all the big canvases sold — at some Ksh250,000 ($3,290)each — and a substantial number of the smaller works finding new homes.

Bizarrely, what was for me the finest picture in the show has yet to meet a buyer.

Called Blue Mountains, it showed a river meandering into the distance, where slept the range of mountains that gave the painting its title.

But what was remarkable about it — what stopped me in front of the canvas — was the masterly handling of the foreground … a stretch of sandy rock which led down to the water and became the river bed.

It was so tactile I could have walked into the painting and felt the sand scuff beneath my feet and the heat bouncing back off the rock — an astonishing technical coup.

And Wekesa is very good at getting the feel of a place.

In another picture, Tsavo River Light, huge palms line the broad waters.