oil on canvas

Artwork date: 1936
Signature details: signed and dated top right

(1)

66.5 x 52 cm; framed size: 99.5 x 85 x 5 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Johannesburg.

Strauss & Co., Important British, Continental and South African Paintings, 1 November 2010, Lot 176.

Gallery 101, Johannesburg.

Notes:

In a letter to her long-time friend Richard Feldman, Irma Stern recalled that the British sculptor Jacob Epstein had praised her as the best still-life painter he had ever seen. Stern had travelled to and worked in Europe for a few months in 1937 – the year after she painted Still life with roses, blue bowl and the artist's brushes in a pot – and it was there that she met Epstein. The sculptor came to see her exhibition in London and spent a few hours there, telling Stern, “At last a painter who can paint comes to London. Do you know that nobody living can paint flowers better than you can – that the Renoir roses – I just saw look like paper against your flowers”.[i]

Stern painted this work in 1936, during a prolific period (spanning roughly from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s) during which many of her finest works were created. In 1934, she ended her 7 year marriage to Johannes Prinz. After this, she was able to commit her attention completely to her art, and author Marion Arnold has noted that a new confidence became evident in her work.[ii] With the rise of Fascism in Germany in the early 1930s, Stern refused to visit or exhibit in the country. She had, from a young age, regularly travelled to and lived between South Africa and Germany, and German Expressionism – and artist Max Pechstein in particular – played a pivotal role in her artistic development. However, while still travelling elsewhere in Europe, between 1933 and 1945 Stern, instead prioritised journeys, some for several months, into Africa, eventually embarking on her well-documented and much-celebrated trips into Islamic Africa from the late 1930s

Many of Stern’s most well-known paintings were derived from capturing subjects on her extensive travels. This work is, however, more intimate and brings the viewer into the artist’s private domestic space and the sanctuary of her studio. Stern painted staged still-life scenes throughout her career and developed a substantial oeuvre of still-life paintings for which she is much celebrated. As an avid collector, she amassed African sculptures, prayer mats, antique vessels and oriental and medieval objects on her travels. These objects were often included in her works, but she also frequently introduced personal objects, important in her day-to-day life.

This exquisite still-life was most likely constructed in Stern’s studio – where she spent long hours painting. The room, which is now a part of The Irma Stern Museum in Rosebank, Cape Town, is today painted in a similar yellow to that seen in the background of this work. According to Museum Director, Nadja Daehnke, the current shade is based on the original colour – ascertained from taking scrapings of the layers of paint in the room.[iii] In this exquisite work, Stern includes a small pot holding her paintbrushes – the tools she used every day. Just in front of this vessel, a bright yellow book stands on its side, as if the reader has casually placed it there in a moment’s pause. In the centre, carefully placed on top of a mauve cloth sits an empty dish with a single rose stem and behind this a glass vase with three masterfully painted pink roses – flowers most likely picked from the artist’s lush garden, a tranquil and sacred space where Irma Stern could take refuge from the impositions of the busy world outside.

Sarah Sinisi

[i] Berman, M. (2003). Remembering Irma Stern: A Memoir with Letters. Cape Town: Double Storey, p.52.

[ii] Arnold, M. (1995). Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye. Cape Town: Fernwood Press, p.127.

[iii] Personal communication, 11 November 2021.