oil on board

Signature details: signed
Exhibited: Schweikert's, Pretoria, 1959.,
Literature: Marais, D. (1994). Maggie Laubser: Her Paintings, Drawings and Graphics, Johannesburg and Cape Town: Perskor, illustration on p.334, catalogue number 1429.

(1)

40.5 x 45.5 cm

Mr W.L. Maree, Pretoria. Purchased from an exhibition at Schweikert's, Pretoria, 1959.

Notes:

After her return from Berlin in 1924, Maggie Laubser began to develop her pastoral style, a vision of an idealised world of peasant life where the pace is slow, where men work in the fields and women collect wood and water. In later years, Laubser reflected on this approach saying “everything I know the farm has taught me – not study abroad” (Van Rooyen 1974:16). In order to establish her own distinctive style she had to unlearn the earlier lessons in Cape Town, taught by Edward Roworth, and London. Although Ambrose McEvoy at the Slade School of Art in London praised her for her “sensitive line, deep insight into character and a fine sense of composition” … “she knew ‘intuitively’ that she would never be able to imitate her tutors who were ‘society painters’” (Botha 1964:30). The direction she took initially resulted in ridicule for and critical rejection of her painting, but as time wore on, it became clear that she “was more South African than any other painter in the country; that she alone had crystallized her people’s identification with the soil and their simple, holistic view of nature; that behind the apparent naiveté of her forms there was a devout appreciation of her spiritual unity which binds all living things” (Berman 1983:254).

Landscape with Two Figures, a White Cow and Huts, listed as no. 1429 in the 1994 catalogue raisonné of Laubser’s works (Marais 1994:334), is a later work, representing the years 1950-1973 when Laubser lived in her home Altyd Lig in Strand and had exhibited throughout the country. In this landscape of the eastern Free State, the two figures, the cows and the huts are bathed in autumnal sunlight; the amber poplars and the clouds tinged with gold.

Johan Myburg

Sources:

Berman, E. (1983). Art & Artists of South Africa. Cape Town & Rotterdam: Balkema.

Botha, E. (1964). Die lewe en skilderwerk van Maggie Laubser. Ongepubliseerde MA-verhandeling. Universiteit van Pretoria.

Marais, D. (1994). Maggie Laubser: Her Paintings, Drawings and Graphics. Johannesburg and Cape Town: Perskor.

Van Rooyen, J. (1974). Maggie Laubser. Cape Town and Johannesburg: Struik.