Bonhams 1793 : Irma Stern (South African, 1894-1966) Indian woman, 1941

PROVENANCE:
The collection of the artist
Gifted to Dudley Welch, the artist's partner
Acquired by the Wolpe Gallery, Cape Town
Purchased from the above by the current owner in 1969

EXHIBITED:
Cape Town, Wolpe Gallery, Irma Stern Retrospective, August 1966, no.10

The Wolpe Gallery's Retrospective show celebrated fifty years of the artist's creativity and the above work was reviewed in the Cape Times by Johan van Rooyen:

"The statuesque 'Indian Woman' (no. 10) of 1941, with its exquisite control of opulent reds and great simplicity of form, stands out as one of the major works on the show.

"The art of painting has never meant the creation of a precious object to Irma Stern, but the expression of the force of life in all its multiplicity."

Stern referred to the present lot as one of her favourites: she refused all offers on the painting and later presented it to her partner, Dudley Welch.

The unusual pose adopted here, with the subject sitting low to the ground, with knees bent, one arm resting on a knee, the other straight, and facing the viewer directly, compares closely to Swahili dhow woman, 1945 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue for Irma Stern: Expressions of a Journey at the Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, 2003).