Notes

Harbour scenes were a favourite subject of Irma Stern and appear throughout her oeuvre in varying media. Understood as a consequence of her insatiable need to travel, these vistas can be seen as the sum of a cumulative experience that define the sense of wanderlust that has come to characterize Stern’s career. Early examples from the 1930s feature the island harbour of Madeira, whilst notable examples from the late 1940s include sweeping views of the Venetian lagoon.

In the 1950s Stern’s interest shifted from Italy to the shores of the western Mediterranean and, in particular, the Spanish coast. The following decade saw Irma Stern spend a considerable amount time on the Mediterranean for a mixture of reasons that encompassed both work and leisure. Having travelled frequently to Italy, exhibiting at the Venice Biennale between 1950 and 1958 when she was the featured artist on the South African Pavilion meant that she was already familiar with the region.

Taking ill in November 1960 whilst in Milan, she spent the first few months of 1961 in Alicante, Spain. By now recognised not only at home but also abroad, the Spanish press quickly caught onto her fame, dubbing her ‘La Picasso’, going so far as to release a translated broadcast of an interview with her for North Africa and the Spanish coast. In Algeciras, Stern found a familiar light given the port’s geographic proximity to North Africa. “Spain”, she writes, “was very African in character. Palms grow – dates even get ripe – the sea is blue and the sun shines hard”.¹

Two years later she would return to the Mediterranean, again with her travelling companion Dudley Welch, this time to Cannes on the French Riviera where she would again convalesce after a prolonged bout of illness. The works from this period encapsulate the daily comings and goings of the ordinary folk that frequented the harbour, figurative fisherman find their place amongst landscapes of the harbours whose busy rhythms Stern captures effortlessly with her confident lines.

She would make a final return to Europe with Dudley in 1965 when she exhibited at Gallery André Weil in Paris, before again returning to Cannes. Staying at her favourite Hotel Mediterranée, she enjoyed a room facing the harbour which she described in a letter to the Feldmans as “packed with yachts and smaller boats”.² The final lots here are a testament to these views and are possibly some of the last works that Stern would execute before ill health would prevent her from doing what she most loved; watching, drawing and painting the world.

^1. Quoted in 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, pages 219 to 223.
^2. Mona Berman (2003) Remembering Irma, Cape Town; Double Storey Books, page 147.

Provenance

The Irma Stern Trust Collection, accession number 1310.