Notes

"In 1924 when Maggie Laubser returned to the country of her birth, after studying and travelling in Europe, it is not surprising that she took up the ties of her youth spent living on a farm, and birds became a major source of inspiration for her pictures. The heron features in several of her landscape paintings, sometimes with ducks and sometimes with people that move into the distance. Bird in a Landscape with Rays differs from other compositions featuring herons as the bird’s prominence is emphasised by a rainbow that seemingly splits into two. Dramatically, the heron takes its position on the foreground of the picture plane, between the two half-rainbows that enshrine it. This configuration of the rainbow is suggestive of a Gothic arch and ‘nature’s cathedral’ is called to mind. Some of the rainbow colours reflect on the bird’s feathers linking the bird and the rainbow, and therefore earth and heaven – ‘as above, so below’. This heron embodies a heavenly messenger. This is the domain of eternal light."
Elza Miles

Provenance

Exhibited

South African Association of Arts, Cape Town, 1960.

RMB Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, Gladys Mgudlandlu and Maggie Laubser: Visionary Artists, Parallel Lives, 28 August to 2 September 2020, illustrated in colour on page 8 of the exhibition catalogue.

Literature

Dalene Marais (1994) Maggie Laubser: Her Paintings, Drawings and Graphics, Johannesburg: Perskor, illustrated in black and white on page 349, catalogue number 1525.