Maggie Laubser: Country folk seated at sunrise - SOLD
Maggie Laubser (1886 -1973)
Country folk seated at sunrise
Oil on board
46 x 40,5 cm
Signed bottom left
Sold - 2011
Maggie Laubser’s expressionistic paintings do not attempt to portray reality. They should always be appreciated as a personal expression of her unique view of the harmony of colour and form in, as she called it, ‘the Miracle of Creation’. Her paintings may appear naïve, but are laden with spiritual undertones – she harnessed her talent to celebrate and praise the harmonious qualities of the Earth, and all life on it, under a benevolent Creator.
Laubser’s stylistic development was determined by her studies in Berlin from 1922 to 1924. She found she had an instinctive affinity for German Expressionism, and shared the views of Der Blaue Reiter group who believed that Man is in mystical unity with his world. She was no longer concerned with simply portraying nature, and strove to give her work an expressive symbolic character by intensifying the colour and form of the imagery.
Although some of her strongest works were portraits, Laubser preferred to paint from memory without the subject in view, and her subject matter was continuously drawn from the pastoral scenes of her childhood – the people and things she knew intimately, understood and loved.
By the 1950’s Laubser started revisiting her favourite themes. Stylistically these later works are less forceful; shapes and lines are much smoother, and the very vibrant colours of her early expressionist palette have made way for softer tints. As in most of her pastoral works, she set out to elevate her subject to a nobility and sanctity, in accordance with her desire to express joy and give joy and happiness . In ‘Country folk seated at sunrise’, the family group resting in the morning sun is symbolically connected to the life-supporting energy of the sun by the bent-down rays of gentle sunshine – this symbolises a wholesome environment where man and Creation are harmoniously connected. In ‘Bird, head and house in a landscape’, Laubser again integrates man and nature in rhythmic harmony. A Mother Earth figure watches peacefully over man’s presence, symbolised by the homestead, her profile elegantly framed by a white stork.
Maggie Laubser’s oeuvre serves as a testimony to her integrity as an artist – in her adherence to her personal vision and beliefs, she triumphed over the ridicule, hardship and hurt of years of rejection. She contributed a new dimension to South African art, and succeeded in changing the way her fellow countrymen viewed the pastoral world in which she grew up.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dalene Marais, Maggie Laubser, her paintings, drawings and graphics, Johannesburg, 1994, pp 41-45
Johan van Rooyen, Maggie Laubser, Cape Town, 1974, pp 21 and 22