Irma Stern

(South African, 1894-1966)

The Water Carriers

Footnotes

Provenance
The collection of Johannesburg Art Gallery, 1941-42;
Acquired by a private collector directly from the artist in 1953;
Thence by descent to the current owner.

Exhibited
Johannesburg Art Gallery, 1941-1942.

The painting now generally known as 'Water Carriers' was for a short time in the collection of the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Documents in the archive of the Gallery refer to the work by several different titles. In letters of 1941 to Anton Hendriks, the Director, Irma Stern refers to it both as 'Native Composition' and 'the large Swazi composition'. In 1943, she described it as 'Water Carriers'. And in the memorandum dated 3 January 1946 of South African works purchased for the Gallery since 1937, it is listed as 'Native Water Carriers'. Stern had been in Swaziland in 1933, not 1935, so this reference should probably be understood as the artist confusing different trips in South East Africa. But the repeated use of the word 'composition' suggests that the work is a construction made in the artist's studio from observations gathered in the field.

Irma Stern is known to have been in Natal in 1935. On 25 July she wrote from Durban in her idiosyncratic style to her friends Richard and Freda Feldman that she was "triing to find Zulus which seems the most difficult thing out". Even at Karradine, close to Umgababa where she had first discovered her African Paradise in 1922, she felt that "primitive natives" were "dying out – thanks to ourselves". But in the same letter she wrote that "On Sunday there is a large native dance here in Durban. I am going – but the charme has gone – if one is used to the real thing – the next best is of no use". By this time Durban's Sunday dance competitions had become a regular feature of the city's burgeoning tourist economy. Stern certainly attended this event and it may have been the only occasion during this trip at which she witnessed Zulu people in ceremonial dress: her letter suggests that she stayed in Natal less than a week after the competition.

It is probable that Stern constructed this image from observations at the staged dance competition and this does throw some doubt on the 'Water Carrier' title. Irma Stern did represent water carriers from time to time, for example the Swazi 'Water Carrier' of 1927, but the working clothes, and the hint of a river in the background of this work, confirm the quotidian nature of this operation whereas the impressive beadwork in the present painting is clearly ceremonial in nature. The striking necklaces, with their so-called love-letters, and sweeping bandoliers indicate that these young women are indeed Zulu and they are represented as if on their way to some celebration, with snuff in their ear-pieces – and alcohol in the decorated beer pots (izinkamba) they are carrying: the woven grass imbenge covering the ukhamba on the far left confirms that these are indeed beer pots because such covers were not generally used with izimpiso, the pots that were used to carry water.

The above drawing from this time in the Irma Stern Museum, ISC 783, shows a woman in similar elaborate beadwork; and another, ISC 784, also dated 1935, shows a woman wearing beadwork bandoliers actually dancing. These ethnographic details change the occasion – and character - of the painting entirely. Stern's original use of the word 'composition' surely reflects the constructed nature of this work – and of the dance festival that seems to have provided its imagery.

There is an obvious contradiction between the artist's assertion that "primitive natives (were) dying out" and the exuberant vitality of this painting. The very youth of the four women, and their manifest confidence in their own appearance seem to declare that their way of life is not at all threatened by Western civilization. If this work did result from her visit to the dance festival, Stern clearly got over her scruples about it not being "the real thing" to produce an image that celebrates the durability of Zulu culture. Whatever its origin, there is a defiant quality in this painting – defiant in the face of the inexorable advance of modernity; and defiant in response to a rising tide of criticism of her treatment of African subject-matter.

In May 1935, in 'Idylls of the Black: An Appreciation of the Work of Irma Stern', a draft of which Stern herself had likely approved, Richard Feldman wrote: "Few see the native as does Irma Stern, and so even the friendliest of her critics condemn it as 'highly idealised'". Feldman was probably responding to an article by Frederick Bodmer, 'The Black Man and his White Artist', which was published in the same South African Opinion on 25 January 1935. Bodmer had been portrayed by Irma Stern and so certainly knew both her and her work, but he did not refer to her specifically when he criticised White artists for representing their Black subjects as "invariably noble and beautiful" who "neither toil nor spin", completely ignoring the appalling conditions in the so-called Native Reserves.

Stern's response to such criticism in 'My Critics: Some Home Truths', also in May 1935, was somewhat evasive. On the one hand, she noted that she was used to defending herself from accusations of ugliness, rather than idealisation! And, on the other, she commented that critics habitually contradicted each other, if not in the moment then over time. And, in a significant development she, who had rejoiced in affronting the public a dozen years before, now expressed her appreciation for its continuing interest in her work. Confident in strong public support for her 'native studies' at this time, she is quoted in 'Irma Stern on her Work: Cape Town likes her now': "I exhibited some things there which they yelled at before. Now they think them good". The present work belongs to this extraordinary moment that saw Stern attracting simultaneously academic censure and strong public acclaim – before she largely abandoned local African subject-matter and sought out the exotic elsewhere on the continent.

The correspondence in the Johannesburg Art Gallery archive establishes that in March 1941, 'African Composition' was one of three works that Irma Stern considered a fine foundation of the Gallery's collection of her work: she also asked that the painting be re-framed at that time. Later that year, the Gallery, sought to exchange certain works with the artist; and in 1942, the Gallery replaced this painting with Stern's powerful work of that year from the former Belgian Congo, the 'Slave Musicians' (now known as 'Bahutu Musicians').

This is the title on the label of the frame, that is obviously not original, and which was used by Marion Arnold, Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye, Cape Town: Fernwood Press, 1995, pp.71 and 79.

I am very grateful to Tara Weber, the Registrar of the Johannesburg Art Gallery, for following leads in the Gallery's archive.

Bibliography
Sandra 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, p.50.
Sandra Klopper, 'The Lure of Africa', pp.65-79 in Are you Still Alive?, p.65.
See A Feast for the Eye, p.29 (where it is mistakenly dated 1937).
The gourd on the head of the woman in the background would have been used as a ladle for the beer.
The South African Opinion, 17 May, 1935. Stern seems to refer to this essay on a postcard to Richard Feldman dated 22 February 1935: Are you Still Alive?, p.50.
The Cape Town Review, 3 May 1935.
Rand Daily Mail, 14 May 1935.
Stern wrote in her letter from Durban of 25 July that "It looks to me – this is my last trip trying to find things that are dying out": Are you Still Alive?, p.50.

We are grateful to Professor Michael Godby for the compilation of the above footnote.