Irma Stern (South Africa 1894-1966)
Woman in an orange headscarf

gouache on paper

Artwork date: 1931
Signature details: signed and dated top right; inscribed with the artist’s name, title, medium and dimensions on a Graham’s Art Gallery label adhered to the reverse
Exchange Rates*: USD 35 995 – 47 994
GBP 26 983 – 35 977
EURO 31 003 – 41 337

(1)

49 x 37 cm; framed size: 74 x 60.5 x 4 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Johannesburg.

Graham's Art Gallery, Johannesburg.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Portraiture occupied a central place in Irma Stern’s oeuvre, providing a means not only of recording likeness but of exploring identity and, ultimately, of projecting her own inner world. While she painted scores of portraits across her career, Stern never produced a conventional self-portrait. Instead, she found fragments of herself in others, with her contemporaries noting, “every portrait is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter”[1]. In seeing others, she continually sought reflections of her own identity – woman, outsider, artist – expressed here through colour, line and form.

Woman in an orange headscarf, a gouache painted in 1931, belongs to a year of turbulence and reinvention for Stern.[2] Spending several months on the island of Madeira, she immersed herself in painting with a relentless drive, describing in a letter how she worked “all day… with not much to distract me” and confessing that she could hardly imagine leaving, as the island was “so full of beauty and colour and life”.[3] Yet beneath this intensity lay personal crisis: her unhappy marriage, memories of lost love, and the oppressive weight of a patriarchal society.[4] The act of painting, however, offered her relief and focus.

Stern’s gouaches from this period embody her capacity for immediacy. Quick-drying and luminous, the medium suited her need to capture impressions directly and allowed her to translate scenes with bold, decisive strokes. For Stern, gouache was never simply a preparatory sketch; she often developed fully resolved works in the medium, combining quick, confident brushwork with strong emotional expression.

Here, the sitter’s face is rendered with sculptural intensity: eyes alert yet contemplative, lips pressed in quiet determination. Against a deep ground of radiant blue, the orange headscarf flares with fiery energy, framing the figure with warmth and strength. As with many of Stern’s portraits, the work transcends likeness to become a meditation on character and human presence.

^{[1] Arnold, M. (1995). A Feast For The Eye: Irma Stern, Vlaeberg: Fernwood Press, p.98.}

^{[2] Ibid, p.20.}

^{[3] Ibid}

^{[4] Ibid}

COLLECTIONS:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, Qatar Museum, Doha, the Bielefeld Art Gallery, Germany; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Johannesburg Art Gallery; Durban Art Gallery; Javett Art Centre, Pretoria; Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town; University of the Witwatersrand; University of South Africa, Pretoria; University of Pretoria; Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town.