Title: Seagull and fishing boat
Medium: Oil on board
Signed
Unframed: 39cm x 50cm
Framed: 58cm x 67cm
“Seeing is a critical activity of the mind; it consists of selecting and discarding, in distilling the essential” Maggie Laubser (van Rooyen 1974:11).
In 1921 Jan Hendrik Balwé[1] a close friend and benefactor of Laubser died. This meant that she had to return to Oortmanspost their family farm near Klipheuwel in the Cape Province after a 10-year stay in Europe and England. During this one-year visit before returning to Berlin in 1922 she often travelled to Langebaan where she loved painting sea gulls and boats.
The presence of boats in Laubser’s work is a personal symbol for evasive happiness. Through painting them she remembered the wonderful trips to lake Garda in Italy in the autumn and winter of 1919/20 with Arnold Balwé the son of her benefactor (van Rooyen 1974:12). Maggie often referred to this period as the happiest time in her life. They spent their days painting with no care about tomorrow.
[1] In the winter of 1912 Maggie Laubser travelled to Durban where she met Jan Hendrik Arnold Balwé. He commissioned her to paint a painting of the harbor and was so impressed that he decided to finance her, and her sister Hannah’s studies abroad (van Rooyen 1974:9).
