Title: Untitled (Dow)
Medium: Oil on board
Signed
Unframed: 44cm x 55cm
Framed: 61cm x 71cm
“I so much wanted to do something for my people, but I never realized it would be so difficult” – Maggie Laubser (van Rooyen 1974:15).
In 1924, after years of study in Europe, England, and Germany, Laubser settled permanently in the Western Cape. She struggled to get excepted by the relatively small art world in Cape Town, and through her life she experienced severe criticism on her expressionistic style of painting. The first five years were particularly hard for Laubser, and she retreated to the family farm Oortmanspost (van Rooyen 1974:15).
After making a new friend, Mieke Siegers, in 1929 she felt less lonely, and things started to turn around for the middle-aged artist. Mieke introduced Maggie to Prof P. Serton who became an avid collector of Laubser’s work. The work produced during this period had a new sense of purpose and vitality. In the 1930s Laubser often travelled to Arniston, Langebaan, Gansbaai and Elim and painted the close-knit communities of the fisher-folk of the Cape coast. Laubser’s memories of lake Garda in Northern Italy were stirred through the boats and gulls and a new feeling of happiness replaced the lonely sombre atmosphere in her earlier work (van Rooyen 1974:18).
It is also important to note that her representation of people from Africa was not exotic. Laubser (van Rooyen 1974:17) represented people of colour as “fellow beings in whom she perceived her own simple needs… Her interest in coloured races of her country was humanistic, not Socialist.”
