JFE Celliers

A drawing by South African artist Maggie Laubser (1886-1973) of the poet JFE Celliers. The drawing was donated by the artist for her second exhibition in the MacFadyen Hall in 1933. Jan Francois Elias Celliers (1865-1940) was an Afrikaans Poet and dramatist. Short biography: Maria Magdelena (Maggie) Laubser was born on the farm ‘Bloublommetjieskloof’ in the Malmesbury district in 1886. Laubser left South Africa to travel Europe in 1913. With the outbreak of the First World War Maggie moved from Holland to London where she attended formal art classes at the Slade School of Art from 1914 to 1919. During this period she took painting trips to the Lake District in England as well as Scotland and the Midlands where she painted on her own. Laubser returned to South Africa at the end of 1921 for about a year, after which she returned to Europe – this time to Germany where she lived in Berlin for two years from 1922 to 1924. Laubser returned permanently to South Africa in 1924 and held her first solo exhibition at the Argus Gallery in Cape Town. The artists continued to paint until her death at her home ‘Altyd Lig’ in the Strand in 1973.