15 Facts About Anton Anreith

Anton Anreith was a sculptor and woodcarver from Riegel near Freiburg in Breisgau, Baden, Germany.

Anton Anreith is known for numerous sculptural embellishments that adorn buildings in the Cape region of South Africa, thought to represent the crowning achievement of the Cape Baroque style.

Anton Anreith is thought to have studied under Joseph Amann and later Joseph Horr.

Anton Anreith arrived at the Cape of Good Hope as a soldier in the service of the Dutch East-India Company in 1777 on the vessel Woestduijn.

Anton Anreith's status changed when, in the 1780s, a wealthy Lutheran named Martin Melck commissioned him to carve a pulpit for the Lutheran Church in Strand Street, Cape Town.

Anton Anreith had considerable influence over the facade and carved teak portal of the neighbouring parsonage, known as the Martin Melck House.

Not to be outdone by the Lutherans, in 1788 the Dutch Reformed Church commissioned Anton Anreith to create a pulpit.

Anton Anreith left the service of the Company and worked independently from 1791, often closely with the architect Louis Michel Thibault.

In 1789 Thibault and Anton Anreith were joined by Hermann Schutte, an architect and builder from Bremen and the three of them had a profound influence on the development of Cape Town architecture in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Anton Anreith undoubtedly executed the carvings and fanlights at Rust en Vreugd.

Anton Anreith's work is evident at the Koopmans-de Wet House, and the Huguenot Memorial Museum in Franschhoek, where some woodwork of the demolished Saasveld House survives.

Anton Anreith was head of the first art school in South Africa which was founded by the Freemasons.

Anton Anreith became a Freemason in 1797 as a member of the Lodge de Goede Hoop, for which he designed a number of lime plaster statues, of which three survived a fire in 1892: a Silence figure with an owl; a recumbent man with a dagger, book and hourglass; and a weeping woman and child.

Anton Anreith was responsible for the lion's mask carving on the pump.

Anton Anreith died in 1822, at his residence at 8 Bloem Street, Cape Town.