oil on board

Artwork date: 1958
Signature details: signed bottom left; signed, dated, inscribed with the title and 'Strand' on a label on the reverse

(1)

55.5 x 45.5 cm

Notes:

Maggie Laubser was born and raised on her parents’ wheat farm Bloublommetjieskloof in the Malmesbury district, Western Cape. Although her education and career would see her travel to many places, life as a young farm-girl in the late 1800s and the affinity for nature she gained then, would remain the primary impetus for the individual style and perspective which earned Laubser recognition as one of South Africa’s foremost artists.After attending the prestigious Slade School of Art in London, Laubser moved to Berlin in 1920 – just as German Expressionism was reaching its peak. Here, Der Blaue Reiter movement’s longing for unity with nature resonated greatly with Laubser. The expressionistic use of vivid colours and repetition of curved line and form in Franz Marc's seminal work Blue Horses (1911) for example, has a notable likeness to much of the work Laubser created upon her return to South Africa.In Meidjie met Skape, Laubser uses complementary hues of red and green, and blue and orange to depict the female harvester in unity with her surroundings. The curvature of the clouds in the background is echoed in the slopes of the hills and again in the round of the sheep’s backs as they graze. At a time when the rest of the world was in the grip of industrialisation, Laubser dignifies and celebrates the women working in harmony with the land.In 1947, Laubser moved to Strand, a coastal town in the Helderberg area, where she lived in her cottage Altyd Lig. In her later years, Laubser’s vivid colours became pastel hues, and familiar landscapes instead became imagined still lifes and scenes integrating living beings with nature. As a child on Bloublommetjieskloof, one of Laubser’s favourite chores was feeding the ducks and geese,[1] it comes as no surprise therefore that the artist’s depictions of these birds have become some of her best-known works. Even in her seventies, when Laubser created Wild Flowers, she continued to hark back and pay homage to her pastoral childhood. At the time of her passing in 1973, hanging on the wall of her living room at Altyd Lig was a reproduction of Blue Horses.

Lisa Truter

Sources:

[1] Berman, E. (1983) Art & Artists of South Africa. Cape Town: AA Balkema, p.252.

[2] Van Rooyen, J. (1974) Maggie Laubser. Cape Town: Struik Publishers, p.22.