Strauss & co - September 2026 Highlights

PROVENANCE Dr T E W Schumann, Pretoria, acquired through Professor M L du Toit, c. 1933. Mrs Elita de Klerk. LITERATURE Dalene Marais (1994) Maggie Laubser: Her Paintings, Drawings and Graphics , Johannesburg and Cape Town: Perskor Publishers, illustrated in black and white on page 212, cat. no. 693. Maggie Laubser was part of a small vanguard of European-trained painters who modernised South African art in the 1920s and 1930s. Like her contemporaries, Wolf Kibel and Irma Stern, her bold Expressionist style, which placed colour at the centre of her practice, was heavily criticised and sales were initially poor. Yet even at this formative stage of her career, Laubser enjoyed considerable critical and institutional support, a history recorded in the provenance of this exceptional portrait of a young woman wearing a yellow headscarf. The work was originally acquired in a sale brokered by Martin L du Toit, founder and editor of the literary journal Die Nuwe Brandwag (The New Sentinel, 1929–33) and inaugural head of the Department of Cultural History and Art at the University of Pretoria. Du Toit was an active champion of Expressionism in the Transvaal, introducing audiences to Laubser and Stern, among others. Laubser met Du Toit in 1929, a transformative year in which the Union government acquired several of her works for its embassies in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.1 Du Toit organised Laubser’s first exhibition in the Transvaal in 1931, at Macfadyen Memorial Hall, University of Pretoria, followed by another at the same venue in 1933. In Dalene Marais’s catalogue raisonné, this undated work appears in a grouping that predates 1932. Whatever its precise date, by the time Laubser was introduced to Transvaal audiences, her sensitive portraits of working women from the Cape’s farms had become an important part of her output. Esmé Berman describes her many portraits of the late 1920s and early 1930s as “strong, positive portrayals” marked by “her sympathetic awareness of the human being behind the features”.2 This portrait is emblematic. The almond-eyed sitter, dressed in traditional farm clothing, is shown seated indoors, indicated by the back of a chair at right. Her presence is most immediately registered by the blazing yellow of her headscarf, yet it is Laubser’s attention to her face – particularly the cheekbones, nose and jewel-coloured lips – that ultimately directs the eye. Berman notes The present lot holds a unique place in recent history, having hung prominently in the background of FWde Klerk’s final address. Released posthumously following his death in Cape Town at the age of 85, this pre-recorded video captured the former president against the backdrop of this work, underscoring his significant and debated history in South African society. VIEWTHE VIDEO FEATURING THIS LOT IN THE BACKGROUND HERE.