Featured Signature Help Please

I've had this painting for a long time and the more I look at it the better it gets. I was thinking it was a painting by Wessel Marais a South African painter but most of the paintings I see by him is signed with his first name. It is 36x23 and oil on canvas. And notice the M shape. What do you guys think does it belong to him or can you make out the name. Thanks everybody!!!!

 

it clearly says "Marais"... after googling him, it could be his, at first glance...

 

Yes it looks like the same style to me too but it's the signature looks so different.

 

Wessel Marais' work is entirely South African scenes, from what I see on Google images. This is very un-South Africa (maybe France?). Also, I think his style is much looser and his signature is very distinctive -- name spelled out in full and a line to either side. I don't think it's Wessel.

 

The figures look African to me. And some parts of South Africa look very European. You could easily think this is in Europe, also by Wessel Marais:

 

Where on the painting is the signature? I clicked on the images, but they don't enlarge.

 

Beg to differ, but there is nowhere in South Africa that looks European. There is no part of South Africa's Cape, where Marais paints, that looks anything like the scene in this picture. His works are places I know from my childhood. Here, the church, the poppies ... it looks like a tobacco barn in the background -- romantic stuff, and nothing like any scene you will find probably in the whole of southern Africa. A church spire like that? a giant wooden barn? Nope.

 

There are subtle differences in the palette. Also, his clouds are more what I'd call blocky or chunky, not wispy. It's still quite nice even if it isn't his.

 

What about these?

 

It does look like this one but then again mine isn't signed with a P.

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/38890872_p-marais-french-pastoral-landscape

 

It does look like it, but as you say, different signature.
The people in this one look of European descent, as far as I can tell from the blobs, whereas the people in yours look of African descent (again, going by the blobs).

 

Yes mine does look like African descent.

 

I was searching for white churches with spires in South Africa, they seem to be all over the place. Haven't seen one with a red spire yet, but with all that Dutch influence, who knows. There were red spires in Zimbabwe and Namibia.
Did find this one in SA, in Cradock:


I am not saying yours is by Wessel Marais, nor that it is necessarily S. Africa, just that I wouldn't rule it out. There may also be some artistic license involved, but an African family in non-European dress in a European pastoral scene is highly unlikely.

 

Yeah I highly doubt it's a Wessel Marais too, haven't seen any of his paintings signed just Marais. We may never know... but I like it.

 

There's also a Luther Marais, South Africa, the figures look black but kind of hard to tell from the photo provided.
https://www.google.com/search?q=luther+marais

 

I hadn't thought they looked African, and still don't -- more women and girls in long dresses and hats. The tall wooden barn, poppies in the foreground, trees and red roofs of the buildings, and the hills are very reminiscent of scenes around my brother's place in France. Marais is a name that originated in Normandy, apparently, and is not uncommon.

I recognise all Wessel Marais' more typical Cape subjects, but know of no African women or girls who dressed like this.

The architecture in your pictures, Any, is Cape Dutch, and the workers' cottages are common subjects of artists. However, I hadn't read your post saying some parts of SA look very European and am sorry if I caused offence.

South African visitors agree this is not South Africa, but Wessel Marais might have painted anything he pleased.

 

They look very dark-skinned though, of a skin tone only found in people with African, Australian Aboriginal, and Papuan/Melanesian ancestry.

Maybe Namibian dress?