Cecil Higgs
South African artist (1898–1986)
Cecil Higgs (28 June 1898, Thaba Nchu, Orange Free State - 16 June 1986, Cape Town, South Africa) was a South African artist. She was the third child and second girl of the five children of Clement Higgs and his wife Florence. In 1912, Higgs's father died at the age of 50. In 1916, Higgs became a boarder at the Wesleyan Girls' High School (now Kingswood College) in Grahamstown. Her oldest brother, Clement jr., was killed in 1916 in World War I. Higgs briefly enrolled in the Grahamstown School of Art in 1918, however in 1920 she sailed to England and stayed abroad for 13 years. She trained in London at the Byam Shaw School of Art, at Goldsmiths' College and, from 1926, at the Royal Academy of Arts. Higgs was called back to South Africa, however, due to the illness of her mother, who died in 1934. Higgs held her first solo exhibition in the Domestic Science hall of Stellenbosch University in 1935, meeting the painter Wolf Kibel and the sculptor Lippy Lipshitz. In 1938, she held a joint exhibition with Rene Graetz, Maggie Laubser and Lippy Lipshitz. In 1938 she returned to Paris, however she left due to World War II. Higgs joined the New Group which was revolting against tradition forms of art.
“Cecil Higgs” enters the record as south African artist (1898–1986). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cecil, Higgs and South can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Cecil Higgs” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Cecil, Higgs and South provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5056120. VIAF identifies the subject as 40187950. The Library of Congress control number is n95039735. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1898, 1986, 1912 and 1916.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cecil Higgs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.