Pierneef's style was to reduce and simplify the landscape to geometric structures, using flat planes, lines and colour to present the harmony and order in nature.

This resulted in formalised, ordered and often-monumental views of the South African landscape, uninhabited and with dramatic light and colour.

Pierneef returned to Pretoria at the age of 18, where he met with and was encouraged by already established South African artists such as his godfather Anton van Wouw, Hugo Naude and Frans Oerder.

In 1918, Pierneef left the State Library and started a career as an art lecturer at the Heidelberg (South Africa) College of Education.

During these camping adventures Van Wouw and Pierneef talked, sketched, fished for kurper and drank a great deal of coffee.

During one of these, an advertising project to sell the land around Hartebeespoort dam, he met his future second wife, a Dutch woman named May Schoep.

May Pierneef (née Shoep) was the sister of Albertha Louise du Preez, nickname Be (née Schoep) who was married to Dr Jan Dirk Gysbert du Preez (a doctor, graduated in the Netherlands and Maths genius), who brought May Schoep and their mother, Wietje, to South Africa from the Netherlands, when he married Be.

Pierneef accepted a commission in 1929 to paint 32 panels for the interior of the then-new Johannesburg Railway Station, a task he completed by 1932.