Anton Van Wouw was a painter and sculptor and he is known as the father South African sculpture. The Dutch born artist is credited with the advent of European sculptural tradition in the South African sculpture scene. Before Wauw, a German sculpture named Anton Anreith who worked in 1783 to 1822 was the only one to create a western influence in South African art scene.Anton Van Wouw was born in Driebergen in the province of Utrecht, Netherlands in the year 1862. In his early years as a student in the Rotterdam Academy of Art, Wauw concentrated on sketching and drawing, but soon he realised that his talents would be reflected truly in modelling. He found himself more and more attracted to modelling and studied under Vieillevoye at the Academy, and later in the studio of the sculptor Joseph Graven.It was in 1890, at the age of 28 that Wauw decide to move to South Africa. According Cohen (who wrote about Wauw), Wauw kept looking at the pictures of the Transvaal Boers thinking that they would be brave people and he decided to stay among them. So, he reached Pretoria and started working with a gunsmith. He befriended another great artist of the time, Frans Oerder in 1908 and the two shared a studio.Just before the Anglo-Boer war occurred, Wauw received his first significant assignment as a sculpture. He was commissioned to create a monument by President Kruger which still stands at Church Square, Pretoria. After the war, Wauw began receiving numerous assignments and he established himself as a front runner in the sculptural scene in South Africa. Couple of the famous works of this time was the piece that he did for South African National Women’s Memorial in Bloemfontein and a frieze for Pretoria’s main Post Office. In 1906, he made several art pieces depicting the life and work on the mine fields.Wauw liked to draw inspiration from live models and never relied on sketches or photographs. His models had to pose for him for days until he finished his work. Most of the time, his African servants were the ones who posed as models for him. In one of his famous works, the Bushman Hunter, it was his servant korhaan who posed as a model. In 1908, Wauw conducted his first solo exhibition in Johannesburg. In 1909, another solo exhibition was held in London. Apart from large monuments, Wauw also began sculpting smaller busts. Among his most famous works are, ‘The Bushman hunter’, ‘The dagga smoker’, ‘The Basuto witness’ and ‘The mealiepap eater’. In 1913, the Netherlands Government awarded him with the Cross of the Knightly Order of Oranje-Nassau. In 1917 Wauw became a member of the South African African Society of Artists. In 1936 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Pretoria and a Medal of Honour in 1937. 1939 was a productive year in which he finished two monuments; Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria and a large bas-relief panel for Voortrekker High School in Boksburg.Anton van Wouw was considered as a product of the European sculptural tradition and his creations showed life like beauty and emotions. He paid attention to detail and painstakingly worked to make his creations perfect.