Cranes

Cranes by the South African artist Maggie Laubser (1886-1973) was painted in 1936. The painting is typical of the Laubser's work on birds, which she created between 1932 and 1938 on the farm named Oortmans Post. The painting was donated to the University of Pretoria by Laubser in September 1939 after an exhibition in the MacFadyen Memorial Hall. 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.