Strauss & co - 12 November 2018, Johannesburg

198 severe centre parting of her swept-back, chestnut hair perfectly framing her face and offsetting the glistening vermilion of her exquisitely painted lips, set dramatically against the emerald-green backdrop. The sitter’s graceful poise is enhanced by Stern’s careful depiction of the details of her accessories: a pink rose holding her hair tightly in place, an elegant drop-pearl earring, a slim black-and- gold wristwatch on her slender wrist, and three black-and-gold rings adorning the ring finger of an immaculately manicured hand, which in turn holds a pale orange rose. While these details are clearly markers of gender and social standing there is something disquieting about the painting that makes them seem like talismans, there to protect the exquisitely vulnerable young woman rather than to adorn her. ‘Her quiet reserve and aloof manner created an aura of mystery around her that discouraged intimacy,’ 4 says Mona, and it is this enigmatic air that Stern has uncannily captured. To the outside world, Mary appeared to lead a charmed life. She was beautiful and married to a successful man who adored her. She lived in a lovely home with a fine garden and was a gracious hostess renowned for her attention to detail and exquisite taste. Yet inwardly, it seems that Mary was driven by passions and torments of which she never spoke. ‘Something about her always remained a mystery,’says Mona, ‘clouded in conjecture and uncertainty.’ 5 Stern certainly captured Mary’s exceptional beauty and grace, but more than that, she produced a compelling portrait of a complex, secretive woman. There is a pensive aloofness in Mary’s expression that speaks also of a certain pathos. While the slight exaggeration of her limpid eyes immediately draws the viewer, this is deflected by her refusal to return the gaze; she stares instead into the middle distance beyond the frame. While she is certainly poised, she seems somehow emotionally tense, the pearl earring a metonymic displacement, perhaps, of an invisible tear. Freda hung the work in pride of place in the emerald-green dining room with the portraits that Stern had painted of her. Stern, always the master of expression, presciently captured something of the quiet, unvoiced turmoil of Mary’s life, and in so doing gives us an extraordinary portrait of the complexities and contradictions that lie beneath the masks of outward appearance. Federico Freschi 1 Mona Berman, personal communication, 22 September 2018. 2 Ibid . 3 Ibid . 4 Ibid . 5 Ibid . Figure 1 Mary Cramer photographed by Henry Treisman, c. 1941. (Collection Mona Berman). Figure 2 Irma Stern, Argentinian Woman , 1941, oil on canvas, 61 by 51 cm. (Irma Stern Trust Collection, accession no. 12). Figure 3 Irma Stern, Portrait of Stella, Lady Bailey , 1944, oil on canvas laid on board 64 by 77 cm. (Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary African Art Sale, 16 May 2017).