oil on canvas

Artwork date: 1946
Signature details: signed and dated

(1)

91 x 66 cm

Acquired by the current owner from Louis Schachat, Die Kunskamer, Cape Town in 1974.

Notes:

Irma Stern’s Malay Girl provides opportunities to re-evaluate our understanding of the artist and her attitude to African and Malay peoples and their cultures. Not only was Stern venturing into little known territories but she spent extended periods amongst people whom she came to understand in ways not common amongst most of her peers. Malay Girl is a key painting in this regard, offering keen insights into how Stern challenged racial, social and gender norms, a subject elucidated by several important scholars in recent years.

As early as 1935 Stern gave her good friend, Richard Feldman, four reproductions to illustrate his book, Schwarts un Veys (Black and White), including one for the front cover. This gesture establishes the friendship and mutual interest between the artist and Feldman, a prominent member of the South African Labour Party, who fought tirelessly for health, housing and education for the unenfranchised. As Claudia Braude has convincingly argued, by enabling us to consider Stern’s work in relation to Feldman’s socialism, this information provides a key to tracing her trajectory from seeing Africa through her mentor, German Expressionist, Max Pechstein’s primitivist, idealising eyes to representing African subjects increasingly realistically (Braude 2011:53).

It was a mere four years later that she made her first journey to Zanzibar, staying for four months, followed by a second visit in 1945, after which she published her book, Zanzibar, detailing its impact on her. Her respect for Zanzibar’s many and diverse cultures is evident not only in the Arabic script that she chose for its endpapers but also in how her descriptions of the local peoples reflect her admiration for them.

Malay Girl, painted in 1946 less than 12 months after Stern’s iconic Bahora Girl, which sold at auction in 2010, shows remarkable similarities in the treatment of the face. Both have large almond-shaped eyes with dark pupils framed by beautifully arched eyebrows. Although the title, Malay Girl, appears in several of her catalogues of the time, it is clear that she was also invoking memories of the remarkable women she encountered in Zanzibar.

Stern brought back with her many treasures from Zanzibar including woven, shield-shaped raffia mats which she so admired that she illustrated no less than two in Zanzibar (Stern 1948:42 and 78). Behind the girl in this painting, one of these mats is strategically positioned so as to suggest an archway, typical of the ogive arch forms of Islamic architecture, and to evoke a world beyond the frame.

Between 1942 and 1947 Stern mounted several ‘Zanzibari’ exhibitions in the Argus Gallery in Cape Town and the Gainsborough Gallery in Johannesburg in which she included similar raffia mats and decorative items soured in Zanzibar to provide a context for her paintings as evidenced in photographs of the period. Malay Girl is listed in some of these catalogues. Vivid memories of Zanzibar would no doubt have been foremost in her thoughts as she painted this in 1946.

Stern presents us with a sympathetic portrait of a girl simply dressed in a Celadon green robe with a white shawl covering her head and shoulders, its diaphanous quality allowing hints of flesh tones around her shoulder. The cool green and white fabrics contrast with the soft modulated tones of her skin, highlighted with warm red accents that are echoed in the decorative mat and her emphatic signature.

She sits in an unaffected pose, unadorned and relaxed enough to expose her knees, making it clear that Stern was able to establish an extraordinary intimacy with her model. Their obvious rapport is confirmed by the fact that she looks directly at the artist, unafraid of making eye contact. As a result, her candid gaze attracts the viewer and invites us to look back and engage with her.

As Marion Arnold points out, while “Stern’s pictorial style declares her European origins, her vision is also the product of a woman’s sensibility stimulated by extensive contact with many peoples and places” and goes on to say that her “assertion of a woman’s vision is also transgressive since it challenges stereotypical ideas on feminine style and social expectations about women’s art” (Arnold 1995:12).

This uncommonly strong portrait arises from what appears to be a frank exchange between two individuals meeting on an equal footing. There is no sense that this is a demure girl. The painting’s great appeal results from Stern’s ability to empathise with her sitter, gaining sufficient trust to capture her in an unguarded moment. What is acutely conveyed is the loveliness of youth – her intelligence, confidence and curiosity.

The 1940s are widely regarded as the high point of Stern’s career during which she painted some of her most sought-after works. Throughout the decade, Stern produced a body of painting which, in Neville Dubow’s opinion, displays “extraordinary vigour and decorative control” (1974:19).

Emma Bedford

Sources:

Arnold, M. (1995). Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye. Cape Town: Fernwood Press.

Braude, C. (2011) Beyond Black and White: Rethinking Irma Stern. In: Focus: The Journal of the Helen Suzman Foundation. Issue 61, June, pp 45-59.

Dubow, N. (1974). Irma Stern. Cape Town: C Struik Publishers.

Stern, I. (1948). Zanzibar. Pretoria: J. L. Van Schaik Limited.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to Carol Kaufmann for information included in this essay.