Strauss & co - 7 March 2011, Cape Town

106 217 Maggie (Maria Magdalena) Laubser SOUTH AFRICAN 1886-1973 Oestyd signed with the artist’s initials oil on board 28 by 35,5cm R400 000–600 000 PROVENANCE Acquired in 1958 by Professor P F D and Mrs H Weiss and thence by descent to Doctor Milde Weiss In Oestyd Maggie Laubser creates a pastoral idyll of landscape and rural workers evocative of the Malmesbury area where she grew up. Acutely aware of the natural environment, agriculture patterns and seasonal changes, the artist’s depiction of three men harvesting the wheat at the height of summer, has all the authenticity of lived experience and perceived reality. Her unique vision was shaped through her studies at the Slade School, London, under Henry Tonks and Ambrose McEvoy from 1915 until 1918 and her close association during the 1920s with German Expressionists artists such as Karl Schmidt- Rottluff. With these influences she developed her distinctive style that employs acute observation translated through Modernist techniques of bold colour, simplified forms and painterly brushwork. LITERATURE E J Botha, Die Lewe en Skilderwerk van Maggie Laubser , unpublished M A Dissertation, University of Pretoria, 1964, catalogue no 122. Dalene Marais, Maggie Laubser: her paintings, drawings and graphics , Perskor, Johannesburg and Cape Town, 1994, p 196, catalogue no 600.