Arrival in Spain ..........Page 1 >

In August 2001 I made a chance phone call to a friend in Gaberone which ultimately led to me spending two weeks in a very stylish, traditional farmhouse on a vast estate in the central part of Spain. My friend, Ann Done, told me that a Spanish diplomat had been into her gallery (Gallery Ann) in Gaberone and had purchased one of my books as a present for a friend who had been with him on safari in Namibia. The recipiant of the gift, a man that I would subsequently discover to be an immensely successful and influential industrialist in Spain - had liked the paintings
that he had seen in the book, and had let her know that he wanted me to contact him regarding a commission that he had in mind. This I did and soon I had an e-mail reply that piqued my interest.
The man, who I shall call Mr. E. for his privacy's sake, wanted a painting of his estate in Southern Spain, and he wanted me to visit his estate in the first half of October when the conditions were best, and when the deer rut was in progress.
So, in the next couple of weeks, my agent Mark Read of Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg, hammered out all the details and in mid-August an airline ticket was delivered to me.
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I have done many commissions, mostly of African wildlife.
However, commissions are not my favorite type of sale as the buyer usually has a picture in his mind of what he wants - and it can be very tricky producing something that comes up to their imagined expectations. But this was going to be something completely different from my normal African fare so I was excited by the callenge inherent in accepting such work. Also, aside from the tricky nature of this type of work, there was the added uncertainty regarding my complete ignorance of Spanish wildlife. I had many questions in my mind pertaining to these and and other matters involved in such a commission. What kind of painting was wanted - a landscape or a wldlife portrait? The former was my forte, the latter a genre that was most definately not! It was all rather vague and by the the time I was boarding my Iberia flight at Johannesburg, the brief as to what, exactly was wanted, had still not been made clear to me.
I was met at Madrid airport by an employee of Mr. E's company, who rushed me around Madrid in the hour of two that I had there before catching a train to Southern Spain. In that whirlwind tour I just had a glimpse of the city, which included an apparantly obligitary visit to the Real Madrid statiuum - and my guide seemed very hurt when he found out that I was uninterested in soccer and had never even heard of Real Madrid football club.
Two hours after ariving in Madrid I was on a Southbound train and by midday I was at my destination where I was met at the station by Alberto, the manager of the estate. Another two hours later, having driven through countryside uncannily similar to the South African Karoo, we pulled up in the courtyard of a large, rambling, attractive looking villa. Mr E's son was there to meet me, having come down from Madrid for the weekend. The presence of this man was a blessing for me as he was the only one there who could speak English. When he left a day later, on Sunday, he had written for me a few words of Spanish so that I might be able to communicate to the estate staff what I wanted to do on a daily basis. That evening, after he had departed, I found myself in the heart of the Spain countryside, ensconsed in a beautiful villa filled with antiques andl paintings, with two maids, and three estate employees at my beck and call - not one of whom could speak a word of English.....To Page 2 >