Notes

One often sees beautiful fruit and/or vegetables on exotic cloths and sometimes traditional African figurines included in Irma Stern’s still lifes, but the present lot is unique in having a little sketch of a portrait, only half visible, in the background of this sumptuous work. The background of sea green, also found in Mary (Lot 285), another work on this sale, replicates the exact colour of the walls in the dining room of Stern’s friend Freda Feldman, where Stern would set up her makeshift studio when visiting her in Johannesburg. The white irises and fronds of wild plum leaves could well have been picked from Frieda’s Houghton garden. It is, however, the bright red anthurium in the foreground that anchors the whole composition and fixes the viewer’s immediate attention.

The enigmatic background portrait sketch is, in all likelihood, a small self-portrait of the artist, judging from the handful of rough sketches she made of her own profile. Drawing can be considered as thinking, made visible, and this sketch suggests the artist reflecting on her still life practice. As Marion Arnold states: ‘In her representation of self, Stern projected and transformed her internalised emotions. She also found redemption and healing in her love of nature and created a large body of still-life paintings featuring flowers, many of which are brilliantly coloured, affirmative celebrations of the regenerative powers of nature, and personal records of Stern’s life. Flowers in bowls become metaphors of nature contained and constrained by culture, and speak of Stern’s free spirit disciplined by the rigorous demands of painting.’¹

¹ Marion Arnold (1996). Women and Art in South Africa, Johannesburg: David Philips Publishers, page 88.