Honorine Margaret (Mabel) Withers (SA 1870 - 1956 ) Watercolour, "Figures in a rural landscape"

 Honorine Margaret (Mabel) Withers
South African 1870 - 1956

 Watercolour, "Figures in a rural landscape"

Important Listed South African Painter

Listed on artprice, artnet as well as artvault

signed lover left

(27 x 39 cm excluding frame)

(54 x 67 cm including frame)

100% original, guaranteed and a very rare painting

absolutely stunning artwork

 Honorine Margaret (Mabel) Withers was born in London, England, 1870. Mabel Withers studied at the RCA and exhibited in London before coming to SA in 1910. A tireless traveller, she lived in Australia between 1915 and 1920, returning to show her Australian landscapes in Johannesburg. Always in pursuit of views, she often arrived uninvited on remote farms announcing her intention to paint in the locale. The work shown here is the result of such a visit to a farm in the Orange Free State. She worked mainly in watercolour.

The Press romanticised her as an artist in ceaseless quest of exotic places: "She has ranged over Kenya, Rhodesia, Uganda, the Transvaal, Natal, the Free State, our own Hermanus and overseas. Mount Kenya, Ruanzari, the Mountains of the Moon are not merely names to her, and she has inspected some of the sources of the Nile" (cited in Berman,1983:131). In 1935 she held an exhibition at the Martin Meick House in Cape Town where she revealed the results of her most recent peregrinations through Cyprus, England and SA. Art critic Melvin Simmers (qv.) referred to her work as "dull", dismissing it as mere "topographical memoranda on various places which Mabel Withers has been lucky enough to visit" (The Cape Times: 4.4.1935). She died in Wilderness, Cape, 1956.

EAiMtor on SASA-reldted exhibitions

c. 1898- 1950: 1921: SASA 20th Annual Exh. (venue not stated) Mar. (no date). 1922: SASA 21st Annual Exh., RH, City Hall, Darling St., 30 Jan. -18 Feb. 1923: SASA 22nd Annual Exh., RH, City Hail, Darling St., 8 Feb.

 frame comes as a free gift