Strauss & co - 13 November 2017, Johannesburg

248 324 Irma Stern SOUTH AFRICAN 1894–1966 Freda in Khaki Dress signed and dated 1943 oil on canvas 54,5 by 49,5 cm R3 000 000 – 5 000 000 PROVENANCE Purchased by the sitter, thence by descent. LITERATURE Mona Berman (2003). Remembering Irma. Irma Stern: A Memoir with Letters , Cape Town: Double Storey Books. Illustrated in colour on the cover and page 178. In the final chapter of her ‘memoir with letters’, Remembering Irma , Mona Berman imagines a dinner party that might have taken place at her mother Freda Feldman’s Johannesburg apartment in 1986, a year before Freda’s death. 1 Stern had been a close friend of the Feldmans for many years, and was a frequent visitor at their gracious Houghton home 2 – a hub of Johannesburg Jewish intellectual and cultural life – when she was at the height of her career from the 1930s to the 50s. Indeed, during her extended visits, the dining room of the house would be converted into a temporary studio for Stern, its walls having been painted celadon green – better to offset her still-lifes and portraits – at the artist’s behest. Over the years, the Feldmans collected many works by Stern, and sat for numerous portraits. By Berman’s telling, the assembled dinner guests – comprising artists, an art historian, a curator and a collector – inevitably began discussing the Irma Stern portraits to which the walls of Freda’s dining room had been given over. Of particular interest to the guests were three portraits of Freda painted during the war years, in 1943, when she was 33 years old. Two of these portraits are presented on this sale, with the third, Portrait of Freda Feldman in a Basuto Hat , having been sold at Strauss’s Johannesburg sale in May 2016. Although Berman’s narrative is fictional (as she grew more frail towards the end of her life Freda rarely entertained) Berman’s recounting of Freda’s responses to the guests is based on her first-hand accounts of her mother’s relationship with Stern. A certain amount of poetic license notwithstanding, it thus gives a fascinating insight into the primary reception of these works both by the sitter and the artist. It also provides a powerful context for understanding their significance both as portraits of an elegant and interesting woman, and as exceptional examples of Stern’s skill as a painter. Freda shared with her husband Richard a strong sense of social justice. Richard 3 , who came from humble beginnings as a Lithuanian immigrant, went on to become a successful businessman. He was also a prolific public speaker and writer, in English and Yiddish, on topics of social concern. He had a particular interest in race relations, and his writings convey a deep concern with the social and cultural realities of black people in South African cities. 4 Freda, whom he married in 1931, was born in Johannesburg. The oldest of ten children, she grew up in the rural setting of Amersfoort (Mpumalanga) where her father ran a grocery store. Berman describes Freda’s story as that of ‘a young woman who was awakened by the love and passion of a sensitive, highly moral, enlightened man who taught her about life, world affairs, literature, art, culture, Yiddishkeit, community organizations and the political reality of South Africa’. 5 Encouraged by Richard, Freda learned public speaking, and together they established the South African chapter of the ORT organization, a non-profit global Jewish organization devoted to community-based education and training. Freda was elected to the World ORT 6 Union, and became an important and respected leader in the South African Jewish community. She used her natural sense of style to best advantage, and channeled her love of beautiful clothes and accessories into constructing an elegant public persona, ‘not with the idea of showing off to others’, 7 but rather to lend distinctiveness and grace to the countless charitable events she organized. It was also Richard who introduced Freda to Irma Stern, whom he had met in Johannesburg in 1925. Despite the 16-year age difference between the two women, as well as their differences in appearance, temperament and outlook, they became firm friends. As Mona Berman puts it, they ‘seemed to complement each other and be stimulated by the diversity of their experiences’. 8 Much of the strength of this relationship is evident in the portraits that Stern painted of Freda. Berman argues that Stern found ‘the attractive features of my charismatic mother the perfect subject to express her own moods that allowed her to continued on page 258