South Africa was too small for Irma. Not to mention Cape Town. She wrote an angry letter to a friend, describing how unpleasant it was, for a woman used to the metropolis of Berlin, to live in a provincial bubble where everyone knew everyone else and closed newcomers out.
What’s more, of course, the entire continent of Africa lay at her feet, if only she turned to face north. And she did.
For a number of years her artistry thrived, nourished by her constant travels. An oceanside village in Kwa-Zulu-Natal was her first stop. She made friends wherever she went, with no regard for the boundaries of the era. While other hotel guests tossed their dirty clothes into the laundry baskets, Irma sat down with the young washerwoman. They became friends; the washerwoman invited Irma to her wedding.
Her journey through Africa continued. This way and that. Senegal, Zanzibar, Congo … the artist met folks of high and low standing along the way. After the washerwoman, Rosalie Gicanda, Queen of Rwanda, posed for her. And an Arabic priest. Two men. A Bahora girl. A naked girl with oranges.
Flowers too had a life of their own in Irma’s world. Gladiolas, delphiniums, white lilies … she set form, colour and inner beauty to an entire continent. Madeira became extra dear to her heart. ‘Sunshine and bright colours and beautiful children with big, dark eyes,’ she wrote in one of her many travel letters.
Her expressionistic treasure trove only grew. It so happened that during her early years in Cape Town, a buyer, who felt sorry for the mediocre young woman, handed her thirty pounds and took one of her works with him.
A hundred years later, when the mediocre woman was long dead, that painting turned up at the prestigious auction house Bonhams in London. By then the price had gone up.
From thirty pounds to three million.
Irma Stern’s travels through Africa are well documented by way of her many letters. In contrast to her paintings, they were not artistic masterpieces, only strong attempts: ‘The images fell into my lap as ripe pears fall to the grass in the autumn.’ But a short period of her journey can be compared to a blank spot on a world map from the end of the century before last. Anyone who tries to retrace her life and travels will encounter only silence for a whole year in the early 1960s. At that point she was over seventy, weakened by her diabetes, and nearing her end. But there was so much more to discover. Such as Congo, yet again. And after that – what?
The letters to medicine man Ole Mbatian the Elder fill the gap. Irma took a riverboat from Kinshasa all the way to Kinsangi. From there she walked on feeble legs until she got a ride on a bus and then a train into Uganda. Bus again; train once more.
Her illness grabbed hold of her somewhere east of Kampala and settled like a blanket over her diabetes-ravaged body. Her fellow travellers noticed it more than she did. Rumours began to bubble up in the railcar. Lassa fever? Yellow fever? Dengue? Zika?
When the diagnosis was determined to be a mixture of them all, the court of popular opinion decided to pull the emergency brake and dump the white woman in a ditch. She was herded out with canes; no one wanted to touch her. Her suitcase followed her into the ditch; all it contained was art crap, nothing worth stealing.
And there the life called Irma Stern likely would have ended, if not for a cowherd who happened by with his emaciated livestock. He fetched a donkey and cart and took the dying woman to the local medicine man.
Ole Mbatian the Elder was well-known from the highlands of Chyulu in the east to Kisumu in the west. The woman had a fever, was likely diabetic, and complained of muscle aches during the times she was alert.
The medicine man took out his mixture of mint, gum acacia, and a sesame plant that previous generations had dubbed Devil’s Claw. The mixture had been in the medicine cabinet a long time, would it still work?
Three months later, Irma was back on her feet thanks to Ole Mbatian’s herbs, his knack for keeping the hut cool, and three glasses of papaya juice per day.
To thank him for saving her life, she painted portraits of his first wife under a parasol and his eldest son by a stream. She didn’t sign them because they weren’t hers – it was Ole Mbatian who gave her the opportunity to paint them by saving her life.
She attached two sincere letters, one to each painting, in which she expressed her deepest gratitude.
And headed west. Fever-free, but increasingly bothered by her diabetes.
Just before she died, sixteen months later, she sent a third letter of thanks from Cape Town, the provincial bubble that had grown into itself.
She died a hero. Seen by an entire art world. Her home became a museum. The price of her works doubled. And doubled again. And increased fivefold on top of that.