A West African Bust of a Female, Republic of Benin

rising from an eroded torso, the female bust with naturalistic features, with protruding breasts, narrow shoulders, slender neck and oversized head, the eyes and ears delicately carved, with an unusual hairstyle, the left half of the head with short hair and emphasized hairline, the right half shaven, a vertical hole inserted in the head and running through the whole, and two pieces of metal inserted into the nose, small holes above and below the mouth and next to corner of left eye, where metal tacks may have been inserted; weathered and partially eroded surface with traces of white pigment.

Discovered on the outskirts of Abomey in 1926
Charles Ratton, Paris, by 1930
Louis Carré, Paris, 1933-1937
Acquired by the Albright Art Gallery from the above on August 8, 1937 (accession no. '37:8')

Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Art Nègre: Les Arts Anciens de l'Afrique Noire, 1930, cat. no. 559
London, Reid & Lefevre Galleries, Primitive African Sculpture, 1933, cat. 56 (ill., erroneously as cat. 67)
New York, Museum of Modern Art, African Negro Art, March 18 - May 19, 1935, cat. 240 (ill. in Corpus of Photographs, nos. 174-175)
Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, Masterpieces of African Art, October 21, 1954 - January 2, 1955, cat. 77
Elmira, Arnot Art Gallery, The Art of Black Africa, January 19 - February 10, 1965

Cahiers d'Art, 5e Année, 1930, No. 10, pp. 552-553
Manuel Bartolomé Cossío and José Pijoán, Summa Artis. Historia General del Arte, Bilbao, Madrid, and Barcelona, 1931, vol. 1, p. 165, figure 226
Magazine of Art, vol. 31, no. 2, February 1938, p. 91
The Art News, vol. 36, April 16, 1938, p. 16
Andrew C. Ritchie (ed.), Albright Art Gallery. Catalogue of the Paintings and Sculptures in the Permanent Collection, vol. 1, Buffalo, 1949, cat. no. 198
Christian Merlo, Un Chef d'Œuvre d'Art Nègre: 'Le Buste de la Pretresse,' Auvers-Sur-Oise, 1966, cover and pp. 12-13
Steven A. Nash et al. (ed.), Albright-Knox Art Gallery: Painting and Sculpture from Antiquity to 1942, Buffalo, 1979, p. 112-113

Charlotta Kotik (in Nash 1979: 112) remarks about this sculpture: "Discovered in 1926 near the city of Dahomey (formerly Abomey) in Dahomey [today: Republic of Benin], this important bust of a woman poses numerous questions of provenance, dating and identification. It is carved from an extremely hard wood, perhaps kaken; tropical conditions have badly eroded the surface which may also have been deliberately, ritually mutilated. The nose, mouth and part of the forehead have been chipped away, leaving the original delicate carving visible only above the eyes and ears. A vertical hole extends through the core of the piece. Light traces of white paint are visible on the right ear and in several other spots. Iron tacks near the nose may be the remains of an early repair and testify to the unusual importance of the piece in its original cultural context. The small holes near the mouth and eyes have not been explained; placed more symmetrically they might have served to attach special adornments. Merlo (1966, p. 19) and Henry Drewel (letter to the Gallery, 1977) propose that the holes identify the piece as a botchio, or ritual ex-voto, into whose hollow opening sacramental objects and medication may have been placed.
The provenance of the piece is uncertain due to the lack of secure documentation and the absence of closely comparable material. It is uncertain, therefore, if it was made in Dahomey or transported there from a different region. Distant formal relationships with the terra cotta heads discovered by Forbenius in the city of Ife as well as with the Benin bronze heads of the Classical period were suggested by different scholars in the 1930’s. The shaved head led to the identification of the work as a Bust of a Priestess of the Convent of Yewe, executed c. 1500-1600. Recently, however, scholars have rejected both the early dating, pointing out the rapidity of wood deterioration in the tropics, and the identification (letters to the Gallery from Drewel, Susan Vogel and Douglas Fraser, 1976, 1977). A recent plausible hypothesis (Drewel, letter) suggests that the piece was indeed carved within the Western Yoruba Kingdoms in Dahomey, but probably during the 19^th century. The Yoruba king, or Oba, maintained a special class of male and female slaves called ilaris. These functionaries had their heads shaved very much in the same manner as this head (see D. S. Johnson, The History of Yoruba, [London,] 1969, pp.114-15), and journeyed around the kingdom supervising local governments. For the present, then, the designation 'Female Bust' and a date somewhere within the 19^th century constitute a fruitful point of departure for further research.'