Van Thiel-Laan, Magtillt. The Cast Hall of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. 1960’s. Oil on canvas, Private Collection, New 0rleans, LA.
Magtillt Laan is a pafa/penn graduate and Cresson winner from the 1960’s. She studied with Walter Stuempfig and was a colleague of Auseklis Ozols while they were students, friends, and painting buddies at pafa. This painting is still inscribed on the back from the pafa faculty that it was the Winner of the Thouron Composition Prize. Years later Ozols and Laan taught together in New Orleans, La. when Ozols eventually met and married her sister, Gwendolyn Laan and founded the New Orleans Academy Of Fine Arts in 1978.