Lot 213
Irma Stern(South African, 1894-1966)Still life with amaryllis
23 March 2011, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£700,000 - £1,000,000
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Irma Stern (South African, 1894-1966)
Still life with amaryllis
signed and dated 'Irma Stern / 1940' (lower right)
oil on canvas
87 x 94cm (34 1/4 x 37in).
signed and dated 'Irma Stern / 1940' (lower right)
oil on canvas
87 x 94cm (34 1/4 x 37in).
Footnotes
PROVENANCE:
Sale, Sotheby's Johannesburg, 2 May 1984, lot 291
Louis Schachat, Die Kunskamer, Cape Town
A private collection
"Irma's love of the flowers she cultivated in her garden found direct expression in her large still lifes, all exuberant with a vital painterly energy. In some her flowers are hardly contained by the edge of the frame...In her still lifes, Stern eloquently integrated her exterior and interior worlds."
On meeting Jacob Epstein on her visit to London in 1927, he remarked: "At last a painter who can paint comes to London. Do you know that nobody living can paint flowers better than you can - that the Renoir roses I just saw look like paper against your flowers".
A similar composition, Lilies, is illustrated in Arnold, 1995, p.140. A smaller, later work, Amaryllis, 1943, is similar in subject and sold at Stephan Welz & Co., Johannesburg, 7 June 1993, lot 32.
The turquoise glazed Chinese martaban, or storage jar, featured in the present lot dates from the latter part of the Ching Dynasty (1633-1912). It features in many of Stern's still-lifes, including Still life of gladioli and dahlias (sold in these rooms in September 2008). It is still in the collection of the Irma Stern Museum, where it continues to be used for holding arrangements of flowers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
H. Smuts, At home with Irma Stern, (Cape Town, 2007)