Notes

On 3 December 1937 Irma Stern set sail on a return voyage from Europe, bound for Cape Town. Travelling with her mother, Hennie, the journey would be broken by a four week stay on the coast of West Africa, in Dakar, the capital of present-day Senegal. The works from this period would go on to herald the golden age of Stern’s career which saw significant solo trips to Zanzibar and the Belgian Congo between 1939 and 1945.
Noted for their thematic shift away from her expressionist origins that defined her creative output of the 1920s and 1930s, Stern’s portraits from this era are instead sophisticated character studies that rely on empathetic observation rather than stylistic gesture, thus revealing an intimacy with her sitter hitherto unseen in her portrayals of African subjects.
Although in some ways disparaging of the comforts of her exotic setting (Stern had notoriously complained to a journalist from the Cape Times in 1938 that “Dakar needs a hotel” after an uncomfortable stay at the Atlantic Hotel), she remarked that the city “was the most paintable spot I’ve ever struck”, clearly delighted by the contrasting hues of “salmon-pink houses with green shutters”.¹
Despite her enduring protests (she again referred in a separate article to the Atlantic as a “miserable dinge”), the hotel proved nevertheless to be a fruitful base for the character studies that would follow. It was here that she befriended a local Dakaroise woman who supplied the hotel chef with fresh produce from the local market. This unnamed character, (herself the subject of another portrait, Dakar Woman in Blue) functioned as Stern’s intermediary on the ground, acting as an interpreter whilst helping her source subjects for her paintings.² The majority of those that would subsequently come to sit for Stern would consist of ‘Arab’ subjects from the local Muslim community, with instances of female subjects less frequent.
Upon her return to Cape Town Stern would go on to exhibit 120 works at Martin Melck House including still lives, sketches in gouache of scenes from her recent trip to Europe as well as ten oil paintings amongst which Dakar Woman was included.³ Reflecting on the portrait, Marion Arnold notes that “Stern’s skill as a colourist and a portrait artist unite in her robust and sensual interpretation of a Dakar woman. The colour scheme is controlled by the sharp yellow/green headdress. To give resonance to this pure colour, a range of purple-browns and mauves dominates the blouse and the flesh tones.” ⁴
When it was shown in Cape Town in 1938, the Cape Argus described it as “magnificent”, with a later commentator celebrating it as a work of poise, further noting that in “its descriptive attention to personality and decoration” we see “the bridge to the works linked to Stern’s travels to Zanzibar and the Belgian Congo” established.⁵
It is this attention to personality that imbues Dakar Woman with a type of charismatic aura that had not been present in majority of Stern’s earlier work. Referring to the power and presence inherent in great works of art, the notion of an aura here is extended to our experience of an object when it comes to life and breathes from the canvas. This vital life force is akin to what Walter Benjamin referred to when he wrote that in order “to perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return”.⁶

1. Sandra Klopper (2017) Irma Stern Are You Still Alive: Stern’s Life and Art seen through her letters to Richard and Frieda Feldman, 1934 – 1966, Cape Town: Orisha Publishing, page 69
2. Ibid.
3. Sean O’Toole (2021) Irma Stern: African in Europe, European in Africa, Munich: Prestel, page 93.
4. Arnold, Marion. (1995) Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye, Vlaeberg: Fernwood Press, page 62.
5. Sean O’Toole (2021) Irma Stern: African in Europe, European in Africa, Munich: Prestel, page 116.
6. Allen F. Roberts and Mary Nooter-Roberts (2002) A Saint in the City Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal, African Arts, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Winter), page 55.

Provenance

Strauss & Co, Cape Town, 17 March 2014, lot 696.

Exhibited

Strauss & Co, Giving Direction: Figuration, Past and Present, Welgemeend Manor, Cape Town, 14 to 20 February 2022, illustrated in colour on page 23 of the exhibition catalogue.

Literature

Marion Arnold (1995) Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye, Vlaeberg: Fernwood Press, illustrated in colour on page 62.

Sean O’Toole (2021) Irma Stern: African in Europe, European in Africa, Munich: Prestel, illustrated in colour on page 118.