South African’s Painting Fetches Over a Million Pounds in London

A fabulously evocative and vibrant South African painting sold for over a million pounds in London this week! ‘Zanzibar Woman’ by Irma Stern (1894-1966) was auctioned at the prestigious Bonhams sale of South African art for a total of £1,082,500 (R19,289,760).

Irma painted this portrait, an oil on canvas, during her 1939 trip to the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar. Later that year she returned to Cape Town, bringing with her ‘Zanzibar Woman’, as well as other paintings, sketches and examples of the island’s elaborate lintels and carved wooden door strips which she reassembled as frames for her best works. ‘Zanzibar Woman’ is still beautifully set within this original frame, making the work of art a combination of the most desired features of Stern’s work.

The lustrous colours and brushwork reveal Irma’s fascination with the culture and traditions of the Spice Island; and unlike other paintings of women at the time which were usually against neutral grounds, this provides a context for the model with her set against an urban background with someone appearing just above her shoulder, about to disappear down the alley…thus offering a fleeting glimpse of the bustle of Zanzibar streets which Stern so enjoyed exploring.

The current owner of ‘Zanzibar woman’ was a direct descendant of the person who first acquired it in the 1950s.

The top ten paintings in this Bonhams sale included another Stern painting titled ‘Istanbul’ for £326,500, three Alexis Prellers, two Pierneefs, an Alfred Neville Lewis, a George Pemba and a Stella Shawzin. In total the sale at the international fine art auction house made over £2.75million (just under ZAR50million)

Hannah O’Leary, Head of South African Art at Bonhams, said on Wednesday after the sale: “Despite the Rand currently trading at its lowest rate against the pound for many years, today we saw bidding on the best works as hotly contested as ever.

“We are delighted that ‘Zanzibar Woman’ fetched over £1million, just shy of ZAR20million, placing it among the highest prices for Irma Stern’s work, and rightly so.

“New world record prices were set for Stella Shawzin (‘Balancing Figures II’ £76,900) and Neville Lewis (‘The peach pickers, Franschhoek’ £56,250), in both cases smashing their previous records, also set here at Bonhams in London, three times over.

“Bonhams now holds the world record prices for all of South Africa’s most significant artists, including Irma Stern (£3,044,000), J.H. Pierneef (£826,400), Alexis Preller (£748,000), Gerard Sekoto (£602,400) and Stanley Pinker (£337,250) among others, thus cementing Bonhams position as the undisputed global leader in the market for South African art.”