Portrait of an Old Man with Hat; Coloured Sky in Background

Provenance

Gifted by the artist, and thence by descent.

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.

The present lot depicts Old Booi, the shepherd on the family farm, Oortmanspos. Upon her return from Europe in 1924, Laubser produced only eight paintings of this sitter. Of him, she remarked: “Ou Booi...who was our shepherd. He told me many stories of the pioneering life in Bloemfontein, where he came from. (I had a great respect for the odd dignity of Ou Booi, with his multi-coloured patched pants, his green worn overcoat and ostrich feather in his hat. You often come across Ou Booi as he was my model on several occasions.”¹

^1. From 'Dit is my Kontrei' unpublished 5-page transcript for radio talk on the Afrikaans Service of the SABC; 21 February 1956 (translated from the Afrikaans).

Literature

Dalene Marais (1994) Maggie Laubser: Her Paintings, Drawings and Graphics, Johannesburg and Cape Town: Perskor, illustrated in black and white on page 208, cat. no 673.