South African painting fetch high prices

Irma Stern's paintiog, Pondo woman, which she painted in 1929, and Maggie Laubser's Woman in a blue kopdoek, were recently sold at an art auction in Johannesburg for more than R5 milllion. Stern's painting went for R2,82 million, while Laubser's went for R2,42 million - way more than the expected R1,5 million and R1 million respectively. The Stern painting came from the private collection of a collector in Israel. Stern was born in South Africa in 1894. After the Anglo-Boer War, she left for Germany with her parents. In the 1920s she returned to South Africa but her work was criticised negatively. It was only in the 1940s that South Africans started appreciating her work. She died in Cape Town in 1966.