Art imitated art this week when an unknown painter tried to sell a copy of one of Irma Stern’s most famous works from the foyer of a Johannesburg art cinema complex.
The copy of the 1943 oil Watussi Queen, of a regal African tribeswoman, has been on sale at Rosebank’s Cinema Nouveau for R4 200. In its reincarnation, by Leonie Migdale, it was renamed Woman with Band on Head.
Publicist and art promoter Athalie Brett, who organised the showing of Migdale’s work, said she had copied other works by famous artists.
“But some of the things she copies she actually gives credit for,” she said. “I will just have to take it down. I don’t know why she did it — she’s a very kind lady and I’m sure she’ll never do it again.”
The original Watussi Queen belongs to Johannesburg writer Mona Berman, whose parents knew Stern well and acquired the painting.
Art curator Wilhelm van Rensburg, who curated a major retrospective of Stern’s works at the Standard Bank Gallery last year, valued it at R2-million.
In her recent memoir, Remembering Irma, Berman quotes Stern on her travels in Africa and the model for the portrait: “I am meeting a Watussi lady tomorrow. They are grand — they do not walk or work. They are nobility. They are carried about in litters by four men.”
Cinema Nouveau’s manager, Nici Boswell, said her venue “represents art. And we will be taking the painting down with immediate effect.”
But Migdale, a self-taught painter, has other ideas. She said her copy had originally carried the label “Irma Stern, painted by Leonie Migdale”, but that this had fallen off. “Tomorrow I’ll put the label on again and I’ll make it really big.”