Strauss & co - 6 February 2012, Cape Town

162 515 Maggie (Maria Magdalena) LAUBSER SOUTH AFRICAN 1886-1973 Houtdraers signed oil on canvasboard 39,5 by 50cm R300 000 – 500 000 PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist and thence by descent EXHIBITED South African National Gallery, Pretoria Art Museum and Johannesburg Art Gallery, Maggie Laubser: Retrospective Exhibition, 1969 LITERATURE Dalene Marais, Maggie Laubser, her paintings, drawings and graphics, Perskor, Johannesburg and Cape Town, 1994, page 287, catalogue no 1154 Matthys Bokhorst (ed) with Introduction by Gregoire Boonzaier, Maggie Laubser: Retrospective Exhibition , catalogue no 81 Houtdraers is listed as having been painted in 1929 in the catalogue of Maggie Laubser’s retrospective exhibition curated by Professor Matthys Bokhorst and mounted at the South African National Gallery in 1969, in conjunction with Dr Albert Werth of Pretoria Art Museum and Nel Erasmus, Director of the Johannesburg Art Gallery. In the introduction to the catalogue Gregoire Boonzaier wrote: … it was her great interest in all that she saw around her on the farm that inspired her every day. Thus she became one of the first painters in this country to depict the farm-labourers and fisherfolk at their daily labour. Into her motifs were introduced a variety of fruit, flowers and animal-life which she knew so well. This rich variety of subject-matter with which she had grown up, and which she loved and understood, she now portrayed for many years in a series of brilliant paintings in a style her very own. 1 1. Maggie Laubser: Retrospective Exhibition, South African National Gallery, Cape Town, 1969, unpaginated