Strauss & co - 8 October 2012, Cape Town

142 446 Maria Magdalena LAUBSER s OUTH AFRICAN 1886-1973 Landscape with Huts and Water Carrier signed oil on canvas board 39,5 by 50cm R500 000 – 700 000 LITERATURE Dalene Marais, Maggie Laubser: her paintings, drawings and graphics, Perskor Publishers, Johannesburg and Cape Town, 1994, page 284, catalogue number 1130, illustrated We know from Dalene Marais’s catalogue raisonné that this painting was acquired in Johannesburg in the forties so we may assume it was painted in the thirties or even the early forties. It was painted at a time when Laubser was using stronger colour contrasts in larger more clearly defined areas to express her understanding of structure and clarity. Colours are so crisp that one easily imagines a fresh morning. The lime green grass in the foreground and the puffy clouds in Cerulean blue skies above create a vivid atmosphere alive with a sense of profound joy and great optimism in country life. As Johannes Meintjes pointed out in 1947, Laubser did not paint to represent subjects but to express her own feelings. 1 Laubser herself declared: “We are 446