Recently discovered after 50 years in private Brazilian collections, the present lot speaks of close Nigerian-Brazilian relations dating from the time of the transatlantic slave trade to the present day. Indeed, Brazil was the only South American country invited to Nigeria's proclamation of independence from the United Kingdom in October 1960, and by 1961 Brazil was one of the first countries to open a resident embassy in Lagos. It is unclear whether the artist’s dedication to the Brazilian Ambassador refers to the outgoing ambassador of the day, Hersyl Castello Branco de Pereira Franco, or the incoming Paulo do Rio-Branco Nabuco de Gouvéa (1918-1976), who held the post from 13 October 1971 until 20 April 1973.

The ambassador would have recognised the indisputable influence of Yoruba dance, as depicted in the present lot, on the dance culture of his native Brazil. Indeed, Brazil's famous musical landscape cannot be understood without considering the massive cultural impact made by African slaves brought to the Americas. Over 400 years, it is thought that Portugal transported approximately 4.9million slaves from West and Central Africa to Brazil, many to the State of Bahia, where Yoruba culture took hold. Candomblé became a fully-fledged Brazilian religion, mixing traditions brought from Angola, Benin, Congo and Nigeria. Praising orisha spirits and dancing to the rhythm of African drums are just two of the recognisable aspects of candomblé celebrations that can still be heard in Brazilian music today. Samba and Capoeira also developed directly from African percussion-based dance. Even today, many traditional dancers and musicians in Bahia have Yoruba names as well as Portuguese ones.

This trade in culture moved in both directions, and as slaves gained manumission or emancipation, or got deported, waves of African migration back to the West African coast developed. An Afro-Brazilian community began to emerge, developed by descendants of slaves who had twice crossed the Atlantic. Brazilians in Nigeria became known as Agudas and created a Brazilian quarter, a close knit community within Lagos Island. They brought with them many elements of Bahian culture such as food, religion and architecture, and Afro-Brazilian buildings such as Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Water House, and Hephzibah House still stand as a legacy to these returned slaves and to Lagos’s rich multicultural history. By the 1880s, when slavery was abolished in Cuba and Brazil, Agudas comprised about 9% of the population of Lagos, and their descendants, with names such as as Pedro, da Silva, Alakija, Gomes, and Da Rocha, number among the most high-profile Nigerian families today.