Strauss & co - September 2026 Highlights

nearby fishing communities such as Kalk Bay (fig 3). Painted in 1957, Cape Town Docks belongs to the final phase of Stern’s career, when her handling of oil paint became increasingly fluid and calligraphic. Two figures walk along the quayside beside a line of boldly painted fishing boats; their presence integrated into a composition that privileges painterly license and atmosphere over topographical precision. Like many of Stern’s harbour scenes after her stay in Madeira, this work functions both as a record of place and as an understated meditation on maritime labour. Neville Dubow, writing in 1959 about Stern’s lifelong engagement with 1. Neville Dubow (1991) Paradise: The Journal and Letters (1917–1993) of Irma Stern, Cape Town: Chameleon Press, pages 65 and 72. 2. Grosvenor Gallery, London, Irma Stern Memorial Exhibition , exhibition catalogue, 14 March to 15 April 1967, page 7. 3. Neville Dubow (1959) ‘Irma Stern Shows Her Abundant Art’, Cape Argus , 20 February. (fig 3) Fishing Boats , Kalk Bay (1931) and Harbour Scene, Kalk Bay (1956) illustrated in Marion Arnold (1995) Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye , Cape Town: Fernwood Press, page 57. (fig 2) Fishing Boats , Madeira (1931) oil on canvas, image courtesy of the Rupert Art Foundation Collection, Rupert Museum, Stellenbosch. working-class communities whose lives were shaped by the soil and the sea, remarked: “Stern is at her best when the theme of her subjects is basic and powerful enough to match her own temperament – themes of harvest of the earth and the sea; themes where the abundance of nature can be measured by that of the artist.”3