Artist Database

Scottish-born artist Marjorie Wallace trained at the Edinburgh College of Art from 1942 to 1947. She was then awarded a travel grant to explore Europe, after which she moved to Paris. It was here that she met her future husband, Jan Rabie, an Afrikaans writer who would later join the dissident literary movement ‘Sestigers’. In the mid-1950s, the couple relocated to South Africa, settling in Onrus, near Hermanus. They regularly opened their home to fellow Sestigers members like Uys Krige, Ingrid Jonker, Jack Cope, and Breyten Breytenbach, among others, who often found themselves included in Wallace’s artworks. She painted many portraits – of the Sestigers, herself, and other sitters – and captured intimate domestic scenes from her life, such as lunch with friends or reading a book surrounded by her cats. Wallace and her husband lived in Greece for three years in the late 1960s, and this, too, was documented in her paintings. The artist was also attuned to the struggles of those marginalised and dispossessed due to apartheid, a subject that she frequently depicted in her art. Additionally, Wallace mentored black and coloured artists, including the influential Gladys Mgudlandlu.

Wallace exhibited widely throughout her career, and her works are in numerous private collections and many important South African institutions, including the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, the Pretoria Art Museum, and the University of Stellenbosch. In 2005, she was posthumously awarded the Order of Ikhamanga in Bronze for outstanding contributions to the visual arts.