Portrait of a Woman

Provenance

Acquired from the artist, Strand, 1947.

Collection of Gunther van der Reis.

Literature

Dalene Marais (1994) Maggie Laubser: Her Paintings, Drawings and Graphics, Johannesburg and Cape Town: Perskor, similar examples illustrated on page 167, cat. no. 428 and 429.

Notes

“Maggie Laubser, the shy and rather lonely figure who slowly gained the deep affection of viewers all over South Africa, led a secluded and uneventful life from the time of her permanent return from Europe in 1924. But everything she was and all that motivated her art is traceable to her youthful background amid the quiet pastures of the Cape. Her identification with the land and with her farming forebears. Her empathy with earth and nature were the constant inspiration of her paintings”.¹

Strauss & Co is honoured to present no fewer than eleven Maggie Laubser lots on the sale, ranging from an early portrait Laubser painted while she was still in Berlin in 1924, to many other portraits she painted of the people at Oordmanspoort, the family farm in the Western Cape, to landscapes of the area, and to still lifes in her inimitable, colourful style.

^1. Esmé Berman (1983) Art & Artists of South Africa, Cape Town: A A Balkema, page 252.