Lot 32 D α

In his article A newly identified Mangbetu sculptor: “The Master of the T-shaped brow”, published on his website on 25 May 2015, Bruno Claessens identifies a new master carver among the Mangbetu, an artist whose production dates back to the very beginning of the 20th century. Claessens describes a small corpus of five figures and three “pedestals” with head finials by the same hand to which we can assuredly add the present sculpture.

The hand of the ‘Master of the T-shaped Brow’ is characterized by the eyebrows and nose forming a ‘T’, the scarifications as two small parallel marks which frame the face, the deeply incised collar, the emblematic hairstyle of this tribe, the posture of the hands and the pentagonal base.

The collection history of three of these figures is recorded: a figure now in the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam was collected in the Uele region by the geologist E. Lefevre in 1925; another was acquired by the Belgian magistrate, Ernest Shreiber, during his stay in the Congo from 1890 to 1913 (Sotheby’s, New York, 15 May 2003, lot 56); and a third was collected before 1902 by a Belgian soldier in the service of King Leopold II (von Lintig, B. and Dubois, H. African Impressions. Tribal Art and Currents of Life, Milan, 2011, p.77, pl.27).

The two others are a figure formerly in the Dr. Felix Lauwers collection (Burssens, H., Mangbetu: Art de cour africain de collection privées belges, Brussels, 1992, p.61, fig.16), and a figure offered at Christie's, Paris, 16 June 2009, lot 302.