[4] Her work was initially met with derision by critics but has gained wide acceptance, and now she is regarded as an exemplary and quintessentially South African artist.

[5] Maria Magdalena Laubser was born on the wheat farm Bloublommetjieskloof near Malmesbury in the Swartland, a productive agricultural area in South Africa.

[1] She returned to the farm in 1901, and during a visit to Cape Town she met Beatrice Hazel, a realistic romantic style painter, who introduced her to Edward Roworth,[6] giving impetus to her desire to study painting.

[1] During a 1912 visit to her nephew, Gert Coetzee, in Pretoria, she took up employment as a governess on a farm owned by the Wolmarans family in Ermelo district, Transvaal, where she also taught art and needlework.

[5][6] Laubser and her sister left for Europe on 4 October 1913, initially living in an artists' colony at Laren in an area called the Gooi.

[1] Henry Tonks, Walter Westley Russell and Ambrose McEvoy taught her drawing, while Philip Wilson Steer lectured her in painting.

[5] Laubser returned to South Africa briefly in 1915 to visit the new family farm at Oortmanspost, near Klipheuwel in the Cape Province and again in March 1919, after her studies were concluded.

[2] Laubser left London on 6 June 1919 for Belgium, staying at Antwerp and the Villa Chenes in the Nachtigalen Lei in Schoten.

[9] Laubser travelled with Balwé to Italy in August/September 1920[1] and lived and worked at Torri del Benaco and San Vigilio on the Garda Lake.

[1] Laubser was issued with a visa by the German Consulate in Cape Town on 16 November 1922 and was installed at Kurfürstendamm 40, Berlin by 1 January 1923.

[2][1][3] After trips to Weimar and Bavaria and another change of address from Kalckreuthstrasse 5 to lodgings with a Fräulein Finck at Von der Heydt Strasse 1, south of the Tiergarten, which she obtained with the help of her friend Kate Mädler, she settled down to the cultural life of Berlin.

She singled out Franz Marc of Der Blaue Reiter and Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff and Pechstein of Die Brücke as significant to her personality, although she would claim not to have been influenced by them.

[3] The extent of their influence is evident in that she came closest to the German Expressionist style during these years, in which she produced a series of ten lithographs called Visionen.

[3] She met sculptor Moses Kottler and the cartoonist D. C. Boonzaier, who introduced her to his son Gregoire, founding member of the New Group, and renewed her friendship with painters Ruth Prowse and Nita Spilhaus.

[1] Although she was treated harshly by the press, Laubser was elected to the selection panel of the prestigious British Empire Exhibition, the convener of which was M. L. du Toit, without her parents living to see this success.

[2][1] The South African National Gallery and the Pretoria Art Museum combined to host a major retrospective exhibition of Laubser's works in 1969.