Two 1940s paintings by the grande dame of South African art, Irma Stern (1894-1966), lead Bonhams’ South African art sale in London on 14 September.
Watusi Dancers (1942), consigned by a South African collector, depicts the Tutsi people of the Congo region and was originally shown in Argus Gallery, Cape Town, in 1946-47. Zanzibar Arab (1945) was first exhibited in Johannesburg’s Bothner’s Gallery in 1946 and was reproduced in Stern’s book, Zanzibar, which records her travels.w The works carry an £800,000 to £1.2m estimate—the highest of the 93-lot auction.
Bonhams has made six of Stern’s top ten prices at auction. It set the record for a work by a South African artist with her Arab Priest (1945), which sold to Qatar’s Orientalist Museum for £2.7m hammer (£3m with premium) in 2011.