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event for posterity and the resulting picture hangs in the City Hall. (Fig. 4.25) I quote from one
critic who says that he does not “consider this painting …….. one of his best efforts. The

battleship is very good, the mood of the morning with dreamy mists woven about the lower
slopes of the mountain and Devil’s Peak, too, is good, but the tug in the foreground is not quite

right. Perhaps having to paint to order spoiled the mood of the artist.”

The “arrival” painting did, however, have one well-known fan, King George VI. The painting,

commissioned by a city business, had been bought by the city for 400 guineas and was hanging
in the Mayor’s Parlour. The king exclaimed that it would “indeed hang well in the battleship

herself” - virtually a Royal Command that it be thus presented - but the Queen saved the day by
saying firmly that a “better place was in this lovely Parlour in the Mother City”.

He was also commissioned to paint the departure and the same critic comments that here “he
has got the ship beautifully and the profile of the mountain and Lion’s Head very well, but the

proportions of the two peaks slightly wrong”. (Fig. 4.26) This possible dislike of painting to

order fits comfortably into my recollection of the old man, formed from my own childhood
impressions and the way his children spoke of him. He was very much his own man and very

much a man’s man. He would not have been popular with modern-day feminists, but I have a
feeling that he would have been behind those who seek to protect the oceans and the coastlines

from damage.

When the “new” Cape Town Post Office was built, Pilkington was commissioned to paint two

of the murals that decorated the Main Hall - I am not certain when he did this work and it may
have been before the 1947 commission. Again, it did underline his reputation as one of South

Africa’s leading artists.

1948 brought with it a further acceptance by the Royal Academy of a painting of Kalk Bay
harbour at its bustling best. This was what he left me in his Will and this is what my family