Irma Stern; South African 1894-1966; Madeira Portrait
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Note : This vivid portrait by Irma Stern portraying an expressionless sitter swaddled in yellow dates from an important three-month work trip the artist made to the Atlantic island of Madeira in 1931. Stern was familiar with this Portuguese enclave - a "jewel set in the azure of the sea,"1 she described it - from her many shipboard journeys between South Africa and Europe. She purposefully visited the island with the idea of working. The bold new work she produced during her stay bookended a long period of experimentation. Starting in the late 1920s, Stern became increasingly interested in "colour theory" and devoted increasing time to "studying and building up a new palette."2 Stern's heightened interest in colour may seem odd given that her polarising paintings of the 1920s evidenced a keen sense for colour. Stern, however, tended to work with a narrow range, mostly green, orange, sienna and brown, and her colour mixing was also rudimentary. So it was with a mix of frustration and enthusiasm that Stern took up residence in the fishing village of Santa Cruz. Always a prolific artist, her Madeira output included pencil sketches, gouaches and oil paintings, with subjects ranging from harbour scenes to portraits of fisher folk and social outcasts. One of her first oil portraits was of the hunchbacked flower seller familiar to Union Castle passengers.3 The composition is notable for its lemon yellow sky. Yellow was a marginal colour on Stern's 1920s palette, but would become far more integrated into her overall palette over the next decade. It dominates this fluid and gestural composition executed in a medium that - similar to Pierneef's handling of fast-drying casein - reveals Stern's masterful and instinctive command of the brush. 1. Karel Schoeman (1994) Irma Stern: The Early Years, 1894-1933, Cape Town, South African Library, page 102. 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 3. Marion Arnold (1995) Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye, Cape Town: Fernwood Press, page 30.
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