Strauss & co - 15 October 2018, Cape Town

219 The third (fig. 4), painted in 1940, is bolder both in its use of saturated yellows and reds painted in thick impasto, and compositionally, with the horizontal plane shifted downwards. The bright red and yellow shades of the dahlias are offset by the viridian green of the vessel in which they are placed, a partially glazed, oviform Chinese jar 6 with three vertical ears attached to its neck that features in a number of Stern’s still life paintings from this period. The dominant orange and red tones of the painting are intensified by the canary yellow background and bright yellow-green of the lemon in the foreground. The fourth painting (fig. 5), from 1946, presents something of a departure from the preceding three. It follows Stern’s second visit to Zanzibar in 1945 (the first having been in 1939), and both compositionally and tonally it is perhaps closer to her portraits of Zanzibari people painted in the early 1940s than to the by- then established format of her still life paintings. Like the portraits, the pictorial elements – comprising dahlias in a partially glazed Chinese martaban jar, 7 two bowls of fruit on Zanzibari woven mats, 8 and two large papayas – are presented in a flattened pictorial space, crowding the surface of the canvas. Within the overall tonalities of orange, red and yellow, the largely obscured bright yellow background has the effect of increasing the shallowness of the space rather than providing a sense of depth. A strong tonal contrast is provided by the dark purple-black of two bunches of grapes, a tone that is picked up in the blackish-brown streaked glaze of the jar, showing hints of celadon underneath. Bluish-green hints are repeated in the stripes of the woven Zanzibari mat, which in turn is tilted forward so dramatically as to be almost parallel with the picture plane. Further reinforcing the formal link to many of the Zanzibari portraits, this still life is presented in a carved Zanzibari frame. A powerful statement of Stern’s interest in the exotic and sensual, it is unsurprising that this painting set a record for the highest price paid to that point for a 20th-century South African artwork when it sold for one million rand at an auction in 1999. 9 Painted in the following year, the 1947 Dahlias (fig. 6) is a compelling synthesis of the formal concerns of all four the preceding paintings dealing with the same subject. Like its predecessor from 1946, the composition features a Zanzibari mat whose woven stripes add a dynamic visual rhythm to the composition. Whereas the mat in the 1946 painting is presented in such a way that it can be immediately perceived for what it is (its shift in perspective notwithstanding), in this painting it is reduced to its abstract essence by means of a series of parallel lines curving dramatically up the bottom right-hand side of the composition, effectively rendering the horizontal plane vertical. As a dynamic visual element, this forced perspective pushes the flowers vertiginously forward into the viewer’s space, a dramatic effect that is reinforced by the thick impasto delineating the flowers’petals. Although essentially the same colours as the flowers, the muted tones of the stripes have the effect of further intensifying the colour of the flowers, which demand the viewer’s attention with a particular urgency. The vessel containing them – a Ching dynasty glazed martaban jar 10 – is of secondary importance, but immediately identifiable by its characteristic viridian green, which is echoed in the celadon bowl 11 containing the fruit. Unlike in the preceding paintings, the fruits here are relegated to a supporting role, their smaller scale and consistent tones of orange and green deflecting attention to the flowers. Three small orange fruits have escaped the bowl and are partially covered by a fold in the bright red tablecloth. Compositionally, they balance the stripes of the Zanzibari mat, but more importantly have the effect continuing the curve of these stripes, leading the eye upward to the foremost bright pink dahlia, which seems to burst out of the picture plane. A purple-black dahlia in the top right-hand corner of the composition contrasts dramatically with the lemon-yellow background and is balanced tonally by a single black plum glistening in the fruit bowl. This dark circular form is something of an antithetical focal point, serving both to draw the eye back into the pictorial space, and as a pivot around which the visually dazzling drama of the stripes and the impasto petals swirl. Fig 4. Irma Stern, A Still Life with Fruit and Dahlias, 1940, oil on canvas, 79 by 74cm Fig 5. Irma Stern, Still Life with Fruit and Dahlias, 1946, oil on canvas, 84 by 94,5cm Fig 6. Irma Stern, Dahlias, 1947, oil on canvas, 96 by 84 cm