Ursula Schwittay  

1918–1996 

Ursula Schwittaywas a Cape Town–based fashion designer and educator, and a close friend of Irma Stern. She was portrayed by Stern on multiple occasions, indicating a sustained personal and professional relationship. Schwittay designed and tailored garments for Stern, contributing to the artist’s distinctive public appearance. Schwittay was the owner and director of the Cape Town School of Fashion until 1994 and played an influential role in fashion education in South Africa. Following Stern’s death, Schwittay regularly arranged for flowers to be placed on Stern’s studio desk, a commemorative gesture she maintained until her own death in 1996, in tribute to Stern’s artistic legacy 

Anna Starcke  

1936–2025 

Anna Starcke was a German-born cultural figure, journalist, and collector who became part of Cape Town’s creative milieu in the 1960s. After relocating to South Africa with her husband, the artist Helmut Starcke, she became closely involved with the local art community and sat for portraits by artists including Irma Stern and Stanley Pinker. 

Starcke worked in galleries, boutiques, and bookshops in Cape Town and contributed to magazines before relocating Johannesburg in 1970. There she joined the Financial Mail and later served as editor of Management magazine, gaining recognition for her incisive writing on South African politics and socio-economic issues. 

Over several decades, Starcke assembled a significant and discerning collection of more than 150 works of African art, encompassing West and Central African traditions.  The collection was offered at auction by Strauss & Co in November 2025.

Rebecca Hourwich Reyher  

1897–1987 

Rebecca Hourwich Reyher was an American author, lecturer, activist and cultural mediator whose wide-ranging career encompassed women’s suffrage, journalism, travel writing and cross-cultural advocacy. Born in New York City to Russian immigrant parents, she became involved in the women’s suffrage movement in the United States during the 1910s and later held leadership roles within the National Woman’s Party in New York and Boston. 

Reyher’s engagement with the visual arts included a brief but significant association with Irma Stern. Reyher met Stern in 1924 during a six-month trip gathering material for the monthly magazine Hearst’s International. She was immediately struck by Stern’s paintings and subsequently transported works to New York, contributing to their early international exposure. This portrait of Reyher appeared in Stern’s solo exhibition at Ashbey’s Art Gallery in 1925. Reyher delivered the opening address.  

Roza van Gelderen  

1890–1976 

Roza van Gelderenwas a prominent South African educator, cultural organiser, collector and early champion of modern visual culture in Cape Town. Born into a distinguished Dutch-Jewish family that emigrated to South Africa at the turn of the 20th century, van Gelderen qualified as a teacher and became the first Jewish principal of a government school in Cape Town, leading the Central Girls’ School and embracing progressive educational ideals inspired by reformers such as A. S. Neill. Her work in education was characterised by a commitment to artistic, intellectual and social development.  

Van Gelderen’s engagement with the visual arts included a lifelong friendship with Irma Stern, who portrayed her in multiple works, including Portrait of a Woman in a Sari: Roza (1929). The friendship was reciprocal: van Gelderen supported Stern’s school initiatives and promoted her work, and Stern contributed illustrations and a mural to van Gelderen’s educational projects. In 1935 van Gelderen donated Stern’s Swazi Girls (1931) to the South African National Gallery. The portraits of van Gelderen attest to her singular presence in Stern’s circle and to the role she played in extending cultural horizons beyond conventional boundaries.  

David Fram  

1903–1988 

The Lithuanian-born Yiddish poet, playwright and cultural figure David Fram immigrated to South Africa in the late 1920s, becoming a prominent member of the country’s Jewish literary and artistic communities. His work engaged themes of migration, identity and the diasporic Jewish experience. Irma Stern painted Fram in 1944. Her portrait captures both his intellectual presence and the dynamic social and cultural networks of mid-century South Africa. The painting is one of several Stern executed of literary and artistic figures, reflecting her sustained engagement with contemporary cultural figures. These works reveal her interest in portraying the psychological depth of her sitters. 

Siegbert Eick  

20th century 

The German Jewish émigré Siegbert Eick was a well-known figure in Cape Town’s intellectual and bohemian circles. He moved to South Africa in the later 1930s. A notable art and book dealer, he played an important role in Cape Town’s artistic circles through his friendships, support of fellow artists, and advocacy for artistic talent irrespective of race or background. He was a close friend of Irma Stern, who portrayed him in both pencil drawings and paintings. Stern painted two portraits of Eick, in 1942 and 1947, one purportedly in exchange for a Dürer print that was sold from her estate after her death. 

Abbé Henri Breuil  

1877–1961 

Abbé Henri Breuil was a distinguished French archaeologist and prehistorian, renowned for his pioneering studies of Paleolithic and rock art across Europe and Africa. His meticulous fieldwork and publications helped establish modern methods for recording and interpreting ancient visual culture. His admirers included Irma Stern and Walter Battiss. Painted in 1945, Stern’s portrait situates Breuil at the intersection of her modernist portraiture and a broader intellectual and artistic network that included European and South African scholars and artists. The portrait captures Breuil’s scholarly presence and affirms his importance to artists at a time when modern art was energised by anthropology and archaeology.  

Ann Apthorp  

20th century 

Ann Apthorp was a close friend of Irma Stern and part of the artist’s intimate social circle in Cape Town during the Second World War. During this period, Apthorp served in the South African Women’s Auxiliary Services. Stern’s portrait of Apthorp in uniform derived from a period in which private lives and global events were increasingly intertwined. It departs from conventional representations of military service, emphasising instead the sitter’s individuality, poise and psychological presence. Through expressive colour and confident brushwork, Stern presents Apthorp not as a symbol of wartime duty, but as a modern woman shaped by the uncertainties and responsibilities of her moment. The painting reflects Stern’s ongoing commitment to portraiture as a means of capturing character rather than status. 

Barbara Kuper  

21st century 

Barbara Kuper was Irma Stern’s niece and a member of her close family circle in Cape Town. The daughter of Stern’s younger brother, Rudi Stern, Kuper frequently spent time at The Firs, Stern’s home and studio in Rosebank. Stern painted Kuper on several occasions, a testament to the familiarity and trust that shaped these portraits. Rather than formal commissions, the works reflect a sustained familial engagement, allowing Stern to explore character, mood and presence with unusual immediacy. These portraits underscore the importance of family relationships within Stern’s portrait practice, in which emotional proximity informs both likeness and expression. 

Irma Stern: Malay Girl  

1950 

Painted in 1950, Malay Girl marks a significant point in Irma Stern’s engagement with the Cape Muslim community of the Bo-Kaap. While this community had been a primary focus during her “Golden Period” of the 1940s, this work demonstrates a shift toward a more fluid, painterly handling. Stern captures the sitter with a contemplative, downward-looking gaze, shifting the focus from the vibrancy of the surrounding neighbourhood to the private, internal world of the individual. 

The composition is enriched by the inclusion of a still-life element, a bowl of fruit, which anchors the sitter in a domestic space while allowing Stern to experiment with volume and form. The intricate pattern of the girl’s blouse and the deep, sculptural folds of her headscarf are rendered with a confident, rhythmic brushwork that characterizes Stern’s mid-century mastery. In the context of Faces of Cape Town, this portrait exemplifies Stern’s ability to find universal poise and quiet dignity within the specific cultural textures of the city. 

Irma Stern: Maid in Uniform  

The work belongs to Stern’s late period, characterized by a more liberated and textural application of paint. The face is a complex mosaic of deep umbers, ochres and reds, demonstrating Stern’s lifelong commitment to using expressive colour to convey vitality rather than literal likeness. The uniform serves as a formal structural element, a bright, geometric contrast to the darker skin tones, but it is the sitter’s distinct, pensive gaze that commands the viewer’s attention, asserting a private humanity that transcends her professional station.