Honorine Margaret (Mabel) Withers was born in 1870 in London, England. Mabel Withers studied at the RCA and exhibited in London before coming to South Africa 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. 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 referred to her work as "dull", dismissing it as mere "topographical memoranda on various places which Mabel Withers has been lucky enough to visit". 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.