The 1939 portrait of a bearded Arab man with a colourful Al Said mussar, a black ‘subaiya’ over his dishdasha, and an Al Said khanjar, was painted by Irma Stern, a renowned South African artist who spent time in Zanzibar in 1939 and 1945. The portrait still has its Zanzibari carved wood frame.
Though Zanzibar was formerly ruled by the Sultan of Oman, in 1861 the Sultanate of Oman and Zanzibar was divided into two separate countries.
There is no doubt that the portrait is of a member of the Zanzibari branch of the Al Said family because of his mussar and other aspects of his clothing, said Murtadha Al Lawati, director of Ghalya’s Museum of Modern Art in Muscat.
“It’s definitely a royal family member because he’s also wearing the Omani khanjar with the seven rings which the royals have. How I can say this man is actually a royal family member is because of the ‘subaiyah’ (black robe),” Al Lawati told Times of Oman.
The ‘subaiyah’ looks similar to a bisht but was only worn by members of the royal family, Al Lawati said. The man also looks like a member of the Al Said family because of his features, he added.
Hannah O’Leary, an expert in South African art from Bonhams auction house, made the discovery.
“I spotted this masterpiece hanging in the kitchen covered in letters, postcards and bills. It was a hugely exciting find, even before I learned of its political significance,” O’Learly said in an interview with The Guardian.
The political significance of the painting goes beyond its subject. Stern donated it to a charity auction in the late 1950s in South Africa to raise funds for Nelson Mandela and other activists from the African National Congress (ANC) for the legal costs of their treason trial.
According to information about the painting posted on Bonham’s, Stern visited Zanzibar to pursue an interest in Islam and immersed herself in the local culture: “taking tea with the Sultana, shopping in the bazaars, attending a wedding, living in a house opposite a mosque.”
She painted a couple of portraits of Zanzibar royalty, though she mistakenly titled one from 1939 as Sultan of Zanzibar, Sheik Said Bin Ali El Magheri. The sultan at the time was Sultan Khalifa bin Harub Al Said, who ruled from 1911 to 1960. El Magheri (Said bin Ali Al Mugheiry) most likely worked for the Sultan.
Stern also painted the women from Zanzibar and in 2010 her 1945 painting Bahora Girl, of an Indian woman in Zanzibar, sold for £2.4 (OMR1.44 million).
Stern was clearly impressed by the people she saw on the island. She published an illustrated journal, Zanzibar, in 1948, in which she wrote: “bearded figures belonging to another age - a thousand years or more back; gold glistening on their coats, silk woven into their rainbow-coloured turbans, wound artfully, each particular race having a different traditional way...their faces expressed depths of suffering, profound wisdom and full understanding of all the pleasures of life - faces alive with life's experiences.”
According to The Guardian, the current owners of the painting inherited it from their parents who bought it at the charity auction in South Africa and took it with them when they emigrated to the UK.
The portrait of the Zanzibar royal, Arab in Black, will be auctioned at Bonham’s in London on September 9.
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