Following the rise of Nazism and the outbreak of WWII in Europe, Irma Stern turned her inspiration and artistic attention back to Africa. She embarked on a journey by herself to discover the continent and its diverse communities. Following her first visit to Zanzibar in 1939, by March 1942 she was planning to visit the Congo, writing to her friends Richard and Freda Feldman: “I want a change badly. Here if war is at the door – what do I do – but sit and get bombed… My plans are to go up to Elisabethville by rail – truck my car – then get a chauffeur there – and motor for three days – then the road stops – and I can rail my car for 12 hours then I arrive at Albertville. I shall want to paint the Watussi – and a tribe much further north still beyond the Kivu… a 2,000 miles trip through the Lake district… I can only go from May on as that is the dry season” (letter, 24 March 1942).

The period between 1939 and 1946, during which she travelled to the African Great Lakes region (DRC and present-day Rwanda) and Zanzibar, marked the high point of her career. This is when she realised her most celebrated works, comprising of charcoal drawings, gouaches, and oil paintings of the East African nobility she encountered, which have consistently set world records for the South African artist at auction. Rendered in radiant colours and expressive brushstrokes, Watussi Princess (1942), depicts Princess Emma Bakayishonga of Rwanda (ca. 1907-1979).

The identification of Irma Stern’s subjects has long been a subject of debate. Her African portraits were often loosely titled, highlighting primarily the formal attributes and ethnic backgrounds of her sitters, rather than the historical or political context of the era. This ambiguity was reinforced by the complex territorial organisation of the African Great Lakes region at the time. Under the reigns of Kings Yuhi Musinga V (1896-1931) and Mutara III Rudahigwa (1931-1959), Rwanda and its neighbouring country Burundi became Belgian protectorates, but were often assimilated to the bordering Belgian colony of Congo. However, primary sources such as letters Irma Stern sent to friends in 1942, and historical data provided by historian Dr. Dantes Singiza of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, give ample evidence that the sitter is Princess Emma Bakayishonga. “I shall want to paint the Watussi (…). They are grand – they do not walk or work – they are nobility”, she wrote in her letters to the Feldmans on her desire to paint the royal members of the royal court of Rwanda in 1942.

Princess Emma Bakayishonga belongs to a long aristocratic lineage, she was the sister of King Mutara III Rudahigwa (1911-1959), last reigning King of Rwanda, and daughter to King Yuhi Musinga V (1883-1944). A woman of surpassing beauty and the embodiment of elegance; her charm and dignified presence marked her contemporaries, who regarded her as the most striking woman of the era.

Her father King Yuhi Musinga V, after uncompromisingly objecting to the Belgian administration and evangelisation of Rwanda, was exiled on 14 November 1931. He departed from his royal residence in Nyanza with family members and court followers to Kamembe before finally reaching Moba, Congo. Dr. Dantès Singiza attests that Princess Emma Bakayishonga did not follow him, she stayed in Nyanza with her father’s successor, her brother King Mutara III Rudahigwa.

The statuesque princess is engulfed in moving shades of light green and yellow which place her at the forefront of the canvas and reveal her regal beauty. Her skin is painted with affirming warm hues of a brown and black palette which highlight the red undertones of her skin, further emphasised by the scarlet motifs of her mushanana (traditional ceremonial dress).

Princess Emma Bakayinshonga’s upswept hair denotes her marital status, the uruhanika hairstyle was reserved to married women, while young single women wore their hair in amasunzu. The urugori/icyanganga (ceremonial headpiece) positioned low over her elongated forehead, accentuated by an ornament in the centre, points to her aristocratic lineage.

An oil painting titled Watutsi Princess, most likely the present lot based on both its title and price, was included in Stern’s Elisabethville (present-day Lubumbashi) exhibition at the Musée Ethnographique at the end of her Congo trip in October 1942. She had planned the exhibition in advance of her departure, bringing several paintings with her from Cape Town, storing them in Elisabethville while she made the arduous journey further north. Among the 73 paintings shown, at least 13 were of Rwandan subjects, including Watutsi Princess and five others titled Watutsi Woman, including one also identified as our sitter Emma Bakayishonga, which sold at auction in 2011 for £1.1million. It seems Watussi Princess was one of the 11 paintings sold in Congo, from where it made its way to Belgium; no work by that name was included in the exhibition of the unsold Congolese paintings at the Gainsborough Galleries in Johannesburg in 1942, where she sold another 25 works, or at the Argus Gallery in Cape Town in 1943 where a further 11 works were sold, including the Watussi Queen to the Feldmans. Stern’s lyrically-described travel journal Congo was published in 1943.

Princess Emma Bakayishonga passed away in 1979. Her dignified attitude, influence, and beauty left an everlasting impact on Rwandan history. Her son, Prince Georges Ndakorerwa, is still alive and lives in Hamburg, Germany. Irma Stern died in 1966 at the height of the Cold War in South Africa. Though her portraits of Africans are not devoid of Eurocentric, colonialist and orientalist inclinations, they nonetheless act as powerful historical reminders of Rwanda’s royal past.

Kami Gahiga
London, 2021

Bibliography
Sean O'Toole, Irma Stern: African in Europe, European in Africa, Prestel, 2020
M. Wyman, Woman's Art Journal, Irma Stern: Envisioning the "exotic", 1999, 20(2) 18
K. Gahiga & D. D Singiza, On Princess Emma Bakayishonga and Rwanda in the 20th century, personal, 8 October 2021

Kami Gahiga is an independent art curator and advisor based between Rwanda, Switzerland and the UK.

We wish to thank Dr. Dantès Singiza and Ms Gahiga’s grandmother Kayitesi Gashugi (Princess Emma Bakayishonga’s niece) for their invaluable assistance in identifying the sitter and for sharing rich historical accounts on Rwanda’s royal past.