Notes

Preliminary painting verso.

In 1936 Johannesburg hosted the Empire Exhibition, an itinerant showcase of cultural and economic achievement by various territories within the British Empire. The event, held during the city's golden jubilee, remains an important milestone in the early reception of modernism in South Africa. A purpose-built fair ground was erected in Milner Park, on the current site of the western campus of the University of the Witwatersrand, and included innovative structures like architect Geoffrey Eastcott Pearse's art deco Tower of Light. A parallel exhibition was organized at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. The selection committee was chaired by Leo François, president of the Natal Society of Artists, and included Maggie Laubser as a juror. Laubser also presented work, including this lot.

Laubser's presence on the Empire Exhibition was no small accomplishment. Her expressive style of painting, informed by her direct association with German painters Eric Waske, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, was controversial. Johannes Meintjes writes how, following her return from Berlin in 1924, Laubser was "horribly persecuted" in the press, often receiving "coldblooded, cruel and unfair reviews".¹ As Esmé Berman notes the Empire Exhibition was the "first significant demonstration of critical recognition" for expressionist painters like Laubser, Irma Stern and Wolf Kibel.²

In a country haltingly embracing a metropolitan identity, expressionism was a radical challenge to the prevailing styles of romantic naturalism and impressionism. This lot is exemplary of Laubser's ostensibly naïve style. Produced during her highly productive years of withdrawal to the family farm, Oortmanspost, Laubser's technique is noteworthy. The subjects in the foreground are rendered with great delicacy, while the eruptive sky is demonstrative of her gestural use of paint. Laubser's ecstatic pastoral studies of the Boland from this period are generally characterised by the painter's vivid, non-naturalistic use of colour and strong emotional identification with her subjects. Laubser often depicted shepherds. Meintjes describes this recurring figure in her work as a "beloved subject" and praises these particular canvases as "stirring".³ Both Meintjes and Berman note a tone of melancholy in Laubser's imaginative portrayals of shepherds, which typically juxtapose a downcast and solitary figure against a resplendent landscape with dramatic sky. "It is clear that the artist knew great sadness," ventures Meintjes.⁴

1. Johannes Meintjes. (1944) Maggie Laubser. Cape Town: H.A.U.M. Jacques Dusseau & Co., page 8.
2. Esmé Berman. (1993) Painting South Africa. Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers, page 67.
3. Meintjes, op.cit., page 20.
4. Ibid., page 20.

Provenance

Mrs M van der Merwe, Johannesburg, who acquired the work on the Empire Exhibition, 1936

Mr and Mrs LG van der Merwe, Northcliff

Stephan Welz & Co in Association with Sotheby's, Johannesburg, 30 November 1993, lot 490, The Insolvent Estate Mr RA (Tony) Ross

Die Kunskamer

Private Collection

Exhibited

Empire Exhibition 1936

Literature

Dalene Marais. (1994) Maggie Laubser: her paintings, drawings and graphics, Johannesburg and Cape Town: Perskor. Illustrated on page 261, catalogue number 984, with the title Shepherd Seated in a Landscape with Sheep