Irma Stern

(South African, 1894-1966)

Young Pondo Man (framed)

Footnotes

Provenance
A private collection, South Africa.

Undoubtedly one of Irma Stern's most beautiful studies of an African figure, the present work most certainly represents a young Pondo man. In 1929, Stern spent a few weeks in Pondoland where she made several studies of Pondo men and women in both charcoal and oil paint. Reference to contemporary newspaper reports adds important details to this outline. The Zionist Record of 15 March 1929 reported that Stern had just left for "a month's work" in Pondoland; and on 10 May 1929, the South African Jewish Chronicle recorded that:

Irma Stern has just returned from a painting expedition to Pondoland. Motoring from Port St John, she came across a beautiful valley called Mgweyana.... To her intense delight she did find one house and a shop there. It was owned by a Jew. This Jewish storekeeper and his daughters, on being asked for accommodation, had a little discussion, then diffidently offered her the best they could – two rondavels.... Here she worked for some weeks and found rich material in the numerous natives who came every day to the Jew's store to buy and barter.

Irma Stern clearly learned some ethnography during her time in Pondoland. In discussion with the artist after her return, Hora (pseudonym for Stern's friends Hilda Purwitsky and Roza van Gelderen) declared that Pondo people would wear white as a token of mourning; that both sexes had their face slit in childhood (to appease the ancestors); and that they wear their hair in long mournful tails. Stern's Pondo Woman in White (sold at Bonhams in 2008), an oil painting of the exact same size as the Young Pondo Man, and a possible pendant to it, most likely depicts mourning attire; and the white shawl over the young man's shoulder may also have this reference.

The newspaper accounts of Stern's visit to Pondoland explain further details of the works she made there. Whereas on other excursions Stern would visit African homesteads and record domestic activities and ritual occasions, her residence at the Pondoland store allowed her to select subjects out of their home context as they were visiting the store to make purchases. The Young Pondo Man, the Pondo Woman in White and several head-and-shoulders charcoal drawings resemble honorific portraits in the organization of the figure in the format and the attention given to individual expression reflecting the pictorial encounter in the artist's rondavel studio. The rare instance of Stern providing the name of her sitter 'Yekiwe' (i.e. 'Belonging') in one of her drawings confirms that this approach allowed the artist to get unusually close to her sitters.

Moreover, Stern's work at the Pondoland trading store is unusual in her oeuvre in that there survive a number of finished drawings that are very close to completed oil paintings. For example, the design of the 'Pondo Woman in White' is repeated in a large charcoal drawing Pondo Woman drawn in 1929; and the painting and matching drawing from 1929 that have been identified as a Swazi Youth almost certainly represent a languorous Pondo Youth made on this same excursion. Too little is known of Stern's painting practice to be certain but it is clear that in 1927 she created compositions in her Cape Town studio from drawings made during her trip to Swaziland (Composition, Repose, etc.); and the finished state of these Pondoland drawings would have allowed her to do the same with them. But the rarity of such repeated images thereafter permits the suggestion that Stern made both drawings and paintings in Pondoland – and thus started her practice of painting directly from the model: in fact, Hora recorded in the Ivri Onouchi article that "she brought back with her a tremendous number of completed pictures" from this trip.

The 'Young Pondo Man' and the languorous 'Pondo Youth' are also unusual in Stern's oeuvre in representing male African subjects. Except for her representation of Arab subjects in Zanzibar, the huge majority of Stern's African figure studies are of women – and young women at that. Part of the beauty of these paintings is undeniably the fine, almost feminine quality of their features and the patent sensitivity of their expression. There are other very fine male subjects from this trip and one can only guess why Stern rarely chose to depict African men thereafter.

The 'Young Pondo Man' and other works from the 1929 expedition do not feature in the Irma Stern archive. Hora noted that the Pondo works had not been exhibited several months after Stern's return to Cape Town; and that she intended to take them with her when she left for the continent in a few weeks' time. But there are no lists of works exhibited in Europe in the artist's Scrapbooks; and none of the works she exhibited at the Burlington Gallery, Cape Town, in August 1930 when she returned. Moreover, Stern did not start her Cashbook and Expense records until 1935, several years after the Pondoland expedition. This lack of documentation explains the obscurity surrounding the early circulation of the 'Young Pondo Man': its moment of creation amongst the beautiful mountains of Pondoland is abundantly clear.

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

Bibliography
Karel Schoeman, Irma Stern: The Early Years, 1894-1933, (Cape Town: South African Library, 1994), p. 91. The Umgwegwane river is to the east of Port St Johns in the district of Lusikisiki. A Sketchmap of Pondoland by H.C. Schunke, dated 1902, in the University of Cape Town Libraries, shows the former British Residency, a former German settlement, and St Andrew's Mission in the area. There is also a residence marked 'Dorkin'.
Hora, 'A South African Jewish artist: an interview with Miss Irma Stern', Ivri Onouchi, (1 September 1929), p.28.
Marion Arnold, Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye, (Vlaeberg: Fernwood Press, 1995), pp.68-69, 119.
Irma Stern's Scrapbook, (National Library of South Africa, Cape Town), MSC 31,18.