Barbara Tyrrell, who has died in Fish Hoek at the age of 103, was an artist who was known internationally for her detailed studies of the daily life and ceremonial dress of tribes in southern Africa. Her paintings in water colour, gouache and oils constitute one of the most important historical records of a world that was vanishing even as she worked.She always drew from life, which gave her work an integrity not found in the work of artists using secondary sources such as photographs as reference.About 1200 of her paintings are in collections at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Oppenheimer family's Brenthurst Library in Johannesburg, Museum Africa in Johannesburg, Queenstown Art Gallery and the Constitutional Court. Former Constitutional Court Justice Albie Sachs persuaded her to donate 33 of her paintings to the court in 2006.story_article_left1Tyrrell was born in Durban on March 15 1912 and grew up in Eshowe in an environment where Zulu tradition was still the norm.Her grandfather, Frederick Fynney, accompanied Zulu king Cetshwayo on a state visit to Queen Victoria in 1882 and acted as his interpreter.Her father was an assistant magistrate and interpreter in the Department of Native Affairs. She spoke Zulu before she spoke English. It was the family language, and her father insisted they express themselves in impeccably correct and formal Zulu with all the appropriate verbal courtesies and honorifics.At the age of 100, she remembered being enchanted by "the music of the language, its dignity, warmth, softness and flow".She also remembered how horrified members of the white establishment in Eshowe were when she accepted Zulu hospitality, spent time in kraals, participated in rituals and even, the horror, danced with them. Her mother was taken to task for "condoning such bad form", and told that such familiarity with "the natives" was "letting down the side" and "just not cricket".After studying fine arts at the University of Natal she worked as a London fashion illustrator. This taught her nuance and detail and gave her later work a panache that saved it from dry ethnology and made it more widely appealing.Strong-willed, free and independent, as well as chaotic and eccentric, she did things women in those days did not do. On the ship out to England a male passenger berated her for wearing trousers.Back home she decided she had a vocation to travel southern Africa painting the traditional tribal apparel of its inhabitants before it disappeared.She bought a small second-hand 1934 Chevrolet truck that was used to hawk vegetables, converted it into a camper and hit the road. Zulus who heard her coming called it "maceka-ceka", which they said was the noise it made when stuck, as it often was on sometimes terrifyingly bad roads.She travelled alone, sleeping in her camper on farms or near trading stores where she met the locals who invited her to special events such as weddings, funerals and initiations where she drew and painted people in ceremonial costumes.She established a close rapport with her subjects, whom she paid, and sketched them in pencil, with detailed notes about the colours, patterns and bead designs of the items they wore. And their symbolic meanings, about which she quizzed them closely. Later, in the comfort of her camper, she reworked the sketches into paintings.During World War 2 she taught occupational therapy at Baragwanath hospital in Soweto and Oribi in Pietermaritzburg. While travelling between them she'd look for models to paint.From 1946, she began holding exhibitions and selling her work. One of her earliest, at the prestigious Bothner's gallery in Johannesburg, was covered by the Sunday Times, which described her as an expert on native dress, language and customs. In 1948, her work was shown at the Tate gallery in London.After her trips she would show her work to her friend and sponsor Killie Campbell, a collector of indigenous art and an ethnologist whose brother Wac Campbell founded Mala Mala in 1929.In 1950, Tyrrell married Pete Jurgens, whom she had met in Pilgrim's Rest where he was working as an engineer at a mine. They went on expeditions together including to tribes in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) so remote they had to hire a biplane to get them there.She painted and he made African adventure films for Warner Bros.In 1952, her son was born and while her husband continued his filming trips she stayed at home in Richmond. She found looking after a baby more challenging than anything she'd experienced on her travels. "Give me darkest Africa for a quiet life," she wrote.story_article_right2She began a thesis on tribal dress, which led to numerous books and, in 1965, an honorary PhD from the University of Natal.In 1963, her husband, a South African go-kart champion, died of a heart attack while racing near Pretoria. Her sister Cathy was killed in a car accident, and although Tyrrell now had to look after their mother, she still found time to paint and write books.Tribal Peoples of Southern Africa was published in 1968, followed by several other books, including Suspicion is My Name, African Heritage (co-authored with her son) and her 1997 autobiography, Barbara Tyrrell: Her African Quest.In 1983, she moved to Muizenberg where she painted landscapes and plants and took afternoon naps in her Combi caravan for old times' sake. She bought herself a new van in 1998 and drove it for 11 years.The order of Ikhamanga (silver) was bestowed on her in 2008, and the Iziko South African National Gallery held a retrospective of her work that opened on her 100th birthday.She is survived by her grandson, Theau, who lives in France. Her son, Pete, died of a brain tumour in Paris in 1998, with Tyrrell by his side.1912-2015..