Title: Boats in harbour
Medium: Pastel on paper
Signed and dated 1965
Unframed: 44cm x 53cm
Framed: 89cm x 97cm
In February 1965 Irma Stern visited Cannes in France. She stayed at Hôtel Méditerranée and her room had a wonderful sea view overlooking the harbour. During this stay her health took a turn for the worst. Because of health complications she stayed much longer than originally planned. The artwork: Boats in harbour, was one of the artworks Stern made while waiting on her health to improve so that she could return to South Africa.
The subjects Stern focused on during the fifties and sixties were mainly scenes of field workers, grape harvesters, fishermen and idyllic fishing harbours. Andrea Lewis (Kaufmann, C & Lewis, A 2015:38) explained: “They are spontaneously rendered hedonistic images symbolizing fertility and fecundity and owe inspiration from both Henri Matisse and Raoul Dufy.”
Stern continued to organize exhibitions and produce artworks until the end of her life. Dudley Welch, her lifelong companion, wrote to Frieda and Richard Feldmann about what happened: “The doctor in Cannes gave her 18 months and she had 17 of them. The last night she had started drawing in the special nurse’s notebook and I recognized them as the style of continuous type drawing in ink which were the kind she always started her work period with. She’d been looking at a book of primitive paintings & she had just said in reply to me ‘I will get better’ and when I showed her another, she said ‘That I remember’ & then died” (Klopper 2017:228). Irma Stern held nearly 100 solo exhibitions, exhibited at the Venice Biennale 4 times and once at the Sao Paolo Biennale. Her last exhibition was held in 1966.
