Amy Beatrice Hazel 1921 watercolour

Painting in good condition with slight darkening near the mounting edge. Frame has marks and can do with a reframe. Measures 21cm x 17cm. Postage R60

The reputation of Beatrice Hazell, one of SA's earliest women painters is underrated and sadly ignored in recent publications by feminist historians of SA art. Hazell was a publicity-shy personality.  She had preliminary art training in England before her arrival in the Cape in 1885,  where she married Thomas Hazell.  She studied further with George Crosland Robinson,  where she developed her skills as a painter of flowers and fruit,  becoming perhaps the first woman artist in SA to explore the still life genre.  A reviewer of the SASA/SADC exhibition of 1903 at the Drill Hall,  where Hazell had work on show,  appreciated the challenges of still life,  noting that "the delineation of fruit is one of the elementary essays of the student,  and at the same time it constrains the best work of the thorough artist".  Drawing Club Exhibition news clipping of 1903,  SANG Archives).  Some of Hazell's till lifes were made into postcards,  and she also painted landscapes on her travels (Berman,  1983:126).  A member of the SADC,  Hazell showed on the SASA/SADC exhibition of 1902.  On the exhibition in 1903,  she entered as a member of both Societies.  SA art is significantly in Hazell's debt for a special reason.  She befriended the young Maggie Laubser,  and it was through her encouragement that the latter took up painting.