Irma Stern
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Note : Irma Stern’s still life paintings comprise some of her most sumptuous and sensual images, as Marion Arnold has pointed out in her monograph on the artist. In the sanctuary of her studio, she could relish those things closest to her heart – glorious flowers fresh from her garden arranged in combination with beautiful objects carefully selected with an artist’s eye. Stern often included favourite items collected on her travels and occasionally her own hand-made ceramics, as in this case. The glazed earthenware jug, which she made a year prior to completing this painting and decorated with two nubile nude figures, is again used in a splendid still life in the Labia Collection. A similar ceramic vase, also decorated with nude figures, was selected for the magnificent still life of fruit and flowers currently on exhibition in the Rupert Art Collection. The lilies’ creamy sensuality is enhanced by association with the fleshy nude. By contrast, the hydrangeas, originally imported to South Africa from Japan and here arranged in a glazed stoneware jar of southern Chinese origin, draw attention to Asian culture. This painting thus becomes a celebration of Stern’s creativity and her collecting interests. And yet, what could be more suggestive of South African summer than voluptuous Christmas roses? It was never Stern’s intention to offer a window on the world but, as with the great Modernists from Monet to Picasso, to make evident the signs of her creativity on the canvas. And nowhere is this more apparent – not just in the inclusion of her own ceramic work but in her exuberant use of paint to create rich surfaces animated with expressive painterly mark-making. The subtle blues and pinks of the hydrangeas are echoed in the dove blue and lilac tones selected for the painterly background while the foreground with its muted magentas and brick reds anchor the composition. Emma Bedford Christopher Peter and Kathy Wheeler of the Irma Stern Museum are gratefully acknowledged for information and images of items in the painting. Accession number 167: Jug: Two nudes; glazed earthenware; signed and dated on base: Irma Stern 1949. Irma Stern Trust Collection. Accession number 526: Jar; glazed stoneware with 4 ears below the neck; Southern Chinese provincial prototype; Yuan or earlier. Irma Stern Trust Collection.
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