South African painting fetches R13.6 million at auction

·7 Mar 2017

Young Arab, a gestural portrait by artist Irma Stern, was the highest grossing item at Fine & Co’s record-breaking R70.6 million auction.

Produced during the artist’s visit to the Congo in 1942, the work was first exhibited at the Gainsborough Gallery, Johannesburg, in 1942, where it was acquired for £40, said Strauss & Co’s joint managing director Bina Genovese.

It was sold for R13.6 million at the Fine & Co auction.

Other notable works sold included an engraved bushel used by the government of the Cape of Good Hope (R1.87 million), two silver table lamps designed by Patrick Mavros, (R477,456 and R443,352), Maggie Laubser’s “Shepherd Seated with his Flock” (R3.97 million) and J.H. Pierneef’s “Bushveld Landscape“ (R2.27 million).

Another Stern painting sold for R17.5 million at a London auction in 2015, after it was found being used as a notice board in a London home whose owners were oblivious to its value.

The Arab in Black sold at a Bonhams sale of South African art in London in September 2015. It was put up for auction in the early 1960s to raise money for Mandela and his co-accused’s treason trial’s defence fund to raise money for legal fees and support their families. Stern donated a work to this cause.

Despite the record-breaking spend by South Africans, a recent study published by commercial and residential property group, Knight Frank found that worldwide spending on art has dropped by 14% in the last year.

The report noted that there was also a marked variation in performance across different genres with European Impressionist painters, such as Matisse and Cézanne, seeing the largest annual drop in the value of works sold at auction, while 19th-century artists like Constable and Turner rose by 19%.