Male ancestor figure "éyéma-o-byéri", Ngoumba style · Cameroon (South), Fang · ID: 3053423
Sepp Arnemann, Hamburg, Germany (1963)
Lempertz, Brussels, Belgium, 31 March 2012, lot 76
Alain de Monbrison, Paris, France
Zemanek-Münster, Würzburg, Germany, 27 May 2017, lot 367
Arno Henseler, Munich, Germany
Description
wood, pigments, metal sheet, mirror glass, rest. (breakage: right forearm/right hand?), inventory no. “25.114:5.” on the backside, base
Characteristics of the Ngoumba Style: rectangular beard and mouth, applications with brass sheet.
For similar works from the same workshop or by the same artist, see AHDRC 0045050, 0141594 and 0221492.
The worship of the relics of the family’s illustrious dead is widespread in the whole of Fang country. The present figure served as guardian figure and was fixed on receptacles containing the relicts of venerated ancestors, which were kept in the family home. The figures were meant to commemorate the deceased and to keep the uninitiated, especially women, from examining the contents. They also acted as a kind of protective spirit for the house and its inhabitants.
At the moment of ritual, for example propitiation or initiation, the skulls, bones and wooden statues were smeared with several different unguents with precise and secret symbolical functions.
Comparing literature
Perrois, Louis, Visions of Africa, Fang, Milan 2006, ill. 8 Perrois, Louis, Arts du Gabon, Arnouville 1979, p. 59 ff.
Publications
AHDRC: 0133021