Irma Stern (South African, 1894-1966)Siesta signed and dated 'Irma Stern 1961' (lower left)oil on canvas92 x 73cm (36 1/4 x 28 3/4in).(framed)Footnotes:ProvenanceA private collection.LiteratureMarion Arnold, Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye (Vlaeberg: Fernwood Press, 1995), p. 93 (illustrated)Irma Stern and her companion Dudley Welch spent around six months in Alicante on Spain's Costa Blanca between December 1960 and June 1961. Stern stayed in a suite in the Hotel Carlton in which she converted the sitting room into a studio for the duration. It was probably the extravagance of this accommodation that prompted the local Spanish press to describe her as a millionairess, as she reported in a letter to her Johannesburg friends, Richard and Freda Feldman, in February 1961 (Klopper, 2017: p. 207). More to her liking was their description of her as 'La Picasso', explicitly comparing her to the greatest artist of her generation.In the same letter, she wrote that 'we drive out all the days and I come back and paint in the studio'. A large number of drawings of hill-top villages and agricultural workers from 1961 preserved in the Irma Stern Museum and elsewhere attest to this pattern. Amongst them is the drawing in ballpoint and crayon (Irma Stern Trust #1253) that surely served as a model for the present painting. The composition represents women labourers enjoying a siesta during a harvest. Works from this time feature harvests of olives, apples, grapes, and pimentos, and the little red dots in the baskets in the painting presumably represent tomatoes.Neville Dubow described Stern's Harvest series of 1962 – to which the present work may be related – as 'lyrical figures-in-landscape compositions, loosely knit, yet held together by sweeping rhythms that bind earth, workers and sky' (Dubow, 1974: p. 21). Marion Arnold, in the caption to her reproduction of this work, wrote that '[t]he relationship of the peasant harvesters to the earth is emphasized in this late painting. Not only are the figures recumbent, but the earth plane dominates the composition' (Arnold, 1995: p. 93). In turn, Andrea Lewis described such late harvest scenes as 'spontaneously rendered hedonistic images symbolizing fertility and fecundity' (Lewis, 2015: p. 41). There may be such allegorical meaning in these works, but Arnold is undoubtedly right when she added that Stern 'sees the European peasant as she saw Africans, as people detached from an historical context and devoid of sociological meaning' (Arnold, 1995: p. 76). Despite the fact that the political economy of the Costa Blanca was changing at this time, Stern insisted on describing the peasants she represented as 'happy, friendly people. They're always singing' (The Cape Times, 7 July 1961). In effect, Spanish peasants constituted a Georgic idyll for Stern in a career that featured several natural paradise subjects.On her return to Cape Town, Stern showed her Alicante work in the exhibition Paintings from Spain at the South African Association of Arts Gallery in Cape Town from 31 August to 9 September 1961. A Paris customs stamp (Douane Paris Crapells) on the reverse of the painting suggests that Stern may have shipped her Spanish canvasses through France on their way to Cape Town. Siesta was listed as no. 8 in the exhibition catalogue and stated to be loaned by S.T. Schach, Esq. (who also loaned no. 20 Girl with Jug). Photographs of these two works in Stern's scrapbooks are annotated 'sold Mr Schach, Sea Point'. In turn, Stern's Cashbook records that 'Mr Schach paid by cheque L320/R640', presumably from Stern's studio in the short interval between her return from Alicante and the opening of the exhibition. Stern showed the residue of this exhibition, including no. 39 Siesta, still on loan from S.T. Schach, at the new Adler-Fielding Gallery in Johannesburg in November of that year. Siesta appears to have been acquired by the present owner's family soon after this time. So successful were these exhibitions that Stern, with Dudley Welch, returned to Alicante in October 1962 at the end of another extended European tour.In terms of style, Arnold's reading of the earth plane dominating the composition of Siesta is realised by the extreme height of the horizon in the format. Instead of the earth plane appearing more or less recessive, the absence of sky and the bright white of the building – which is not represented in the original drawing – tend to relate to the vertical plane of the picture surface. This impression is reinforced by the prostrate form of the labourers who, if standing, would be perpendicular to the ground and so reinforce a regular horizontal reading of that plane, but appear now to be part of the same steep plane as the ground: in fact, perspective in this painting depends primarily on the diminishing scale of the figures which, obviously, provides a very uncertain measurement. Through this negation of pictorial space, Stern creates an almost flat picture surface for the description of her subjects. As Dubow noted of Stern at this time, compared with her work of the forties 'her paint was applied less densely. The brush strokes became more gestural, more calligraphic, with a quick luxuriant scrawl establishing the line of a profile, the gesture of a hand or a foot' (Dubow, 1974, p. 21). Undoubtedly, the 'sweeping rhythms' and freedom of Stern's treatment of her Spanish peasant subjects relate to her understanding of them as paradoxically liberated in the agricultural labour they perform and the idyllic sense of community they express.BibliographyNeville Dubow, Irma Stern (Cape Town: C. Struik Publishers, 1974)Marion Arnold, Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye (Vlaeberg: Fernwood Press, 1995)Andrea Lewis, 'The Life of Irma Stern', in Brushing up on Stern, Featuring Works from the Permanent Collection of the Iziko South African National Gallery (Cape Town: Iziko Museums of South Africa, 2015), pp. 30-41Sandra Klopper, Irma Stern: Are You Still Alive? Stern's life and art seen through her letters to Richard and Freda Feldman, 1934-1966 (Cape Town: Orisha Publishing, 2017).This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: ** VAT on imported items at a preferential rate of 5% on Hammer Price and the prevailing rate on Buyer's Premium.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
