Lumbo Mother and Child Figure, Gabon

A testimony of the subtle art of the Lumbo that was revealed at the beginning of the 20^th century, this figure is one of the first examples of Lumbo art to appear in the United States, along with the figure in the Cincinnati Art Museum (inv. no. 1890.1545), which was collected in the 1880s by the trader Carl Steckelman.

The provenance of the present sculpture can be traced back to Marius de Zayas, the Mexican artist and dealer who was supplied with African sculptures by Paul Guillaume, the herald of the avant-garde and one of the first dealers and promoters of African art in Paris. This exceptional Lumbo sculpture was presented as a prestigious centrepiece in the opening plate of the now famous photo album of 1919 that immortalized the African art collection of John Quinn (1870-1924), “the man from New York”, patron of Joseph Conrad and W. B. Yeats, and one of the great avant-garde collectors of the first quarter of the 20^th century. In 1919 Quinn commissioned the Modernist painter and photographer Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) to photograph his collection of African sculptures in an album that contains 27 plates, which illustrate a total of 31 works of art. Three copies of the album were produced, but two are presumed lost; the sole remaining copy is in the Lane Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Lifted from ethnographic pictorial conventions and enhanced by the thoughtful play of light and shadow, this Lumbo mother and child appears, majestically, at the forefront of the image, along with five Baga, Baule, and Senufo sculptures from Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire. The sculpture appears again, photographed alone, in plate VII of the album.

Imbued with spirituality, the standing mother rests her right hand on the head of her son, while in her other hand she holds a small vessel, a calabash gourd. Her hands full, she stands firmly on flexed legs. According to Fredrik Buytendijk, the preeminent specialist of Kongo gestures, her stance indicates a sense of duty. Indeed, among the Kongo people, her posture would suggest a sense of powerful determination; she is roused and compelled to answer a specific calling.

The mother’s majestic head is exaggerated in proportion to her body and legs, in keeping with the Bantu tradition. Her coiffure has a large, rounded crest which is unadorned save for a raised central ridge which ends in a point at the nape of the neck, while her temples are framed by finely carved kiss curls. These curls are an essential detail of Kongo sculpture and may be found on several figures, notably a Lumbo female figure that holds calabash vessels in either hand at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 1978.412.296). The same motif is present on a sculpture which entered the collection of the Etnografiska museet, Stockholm, before 1900; on a figure holding calabashes that was acquired in 1905 by the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin (inv. no. IIIC20277); and on a mask from the collection of Marceau Rivière (Sotheby’s, Paris, Collection Marceau Rivière, June 18-19, 2019, lot 71).

The mother’s features are characteristic of Lumbo sculpture, with her face framed by arched eyebrows carved in relief. The wings of the fine nose are rounded, and rest above full, pursed lips. Her prominent neck is adorned with small double-pointed keloid scarifications. Her shoulders are powerful, her chest is raised, and her stomach bears diamond-shaped scarification patterns, with two bands of crosshatched designs at the waist, either side of the prominent umbilicus, which is another Lumbo characteristic. The ritual sign of the diamond is an important symbolic element for all the cultures of the equatorial Atlantic coastal region of Africa, from Congo to Gabon. It is the primordial motif and founding mythical emblem of the people of the Ogooué basin, representing a gateway to both life and death, the female sex, and the origin of the world.

Slightly parted, her legs rest on wide “rake”-like feet, in a style typical of Kongo sculpture. The neatly carved toenails reveal the hand of a great sculptor. The carved bands that adorn the mother’s ankles and wrists symbolize both wealth and contact with the ancestors. Associated with healing and divination rites, the calabash vessels that the figure holds in her hand may hold remedies or powerful lebika ingredients, intended to repel a sorcerer or an enemy of society; this figure is a nkisi mulebika, which served as “medicine”, reinforcing the social order of the community.

Distinguished by this gesture of an offering that honoured the ancestors, female figures that hold one or two calabash vessels are among the oldest known examples of Lumbo sculpture. Indeed, the figures in the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin (inv. no. IIIC20277), and the Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg (inv. no. C 1811) were acquired by 1905 and 1893 respectively. Like the present sculpture, those two figures are also characterized by their beautiful, fine-featured faces and their jewellery, including bracelets and anklets. The numerous similarities in the proportions, posture, coiffure, and double-point scarification of the present sculpture and the figure that holds calabash vessels in either hand at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 1978.412.296) suggest that the two works may be the work of the same master sculptor. Published in my article in Tribal Art magazine in 2015 and in the monograph Les Lumbu. un art sacré in 2017, this mother and child figure reveals the masterful, refined and “classic” art of the Lumbo, part of the great tradition of Kongo culture. A Lumbo masterpiece by a great sculptor, this mother and child figure is in all respects a historic work.

Charlotte Grand-Dufay