Notes

Stern frequently made the long passage between South Africa and Europe by boat. The Union-Castle Line, which ran a strict timetable between Southampton and Cape Town, journeyed via the Atlantic island of Madeira. In 1931 Stern spent three months in the fishing village of Santa Cruz.¹ An independent single woman who spoke no Portuguese, she
struggled with the island’s conservative Catholic culture, but nonetheless managed to produce bold new work. It included oils that advanced her interest in “colour theory” and helped define a “new palette.”² A prolific artist, Stern’s Madeira output also included sketches and gouaches. Stern was particularly drawn to scenes of working life. Her subjects included fishing harbours and butcheries, as well as the people who animated these spaces, among them fisher folk, prostitutes and a hunchbacked flower seller. Stern’s travel drawings are an integral part of her Madeira work, as indeed her entire artistic repertoire. They register the immediacy of her encounters and visual observations. Impression rather than verisimilitude is a defining hallmark of these drawings.

^1. The Star newspaper ran an untitled biographical report on her departure on 15 July 1931.
^2. Irma Stern, (1933) ‘Irma Stern and her Work,’ South African Life and the Woman’s Forum, 7 December: http://www.irmasterntrust.org. za/view.asp?pg=biography

Provenance

The Irma Stern Trust Collection, accession number 745.

Literature

Jutta Hülsewig-Johnen and Irene Below (1996) Irma Stern und der Expressionismus, Afrika und Europa – Zeichnungen bis 1945, Berlin: Kerber Verlag, illustrated in colour on page 155 as catalogue number 62.