Notes

The most striking feature of Irma Stern’s Still Life with Fish on Lilac Cloth, 1948, is the exquisite mother of pearl colours of the fish spread out like an upside-down fan across the lilac cloth. With brush stokes like ribbons of blue tourmaline, turquoise, bronze, pink and mauve, the scales gleam as if fresh out of the ocean. Stern painted relatively few still lifes with fish, and in contrast to her more exuberant still lifes with flowers, she tends to pare down these works to reflect the simplicity of the lives of fishermen. In this painting the catch of fish takes centre stage in front of only a blue-black bottle and a brown ceramic jar that picks up hints of the pearllike colours of the fish and is set against an unadorned wall of cream and rose pink. Stern painted this still life after her second visit to Zanzibar in 1945 (she first visited the island in 1939). It is fascinating to discover that, in the same year, Alexis Preller painted Fish (1948, fig 1), a small shoal of fish fanned out in a circular composition. Preller in all likelihood painted the work during his stay in the Seychelles towards the end of 1948 before returning to South Africa early in 1949.