This is the rating and price for An Important Fang Female Reliquary Guardian Figure, standing on
Description : a rectangular base with wedgeshaped feet beneath bent legs with angular oversized calves leading to protruding rounded buttocks with notches beneath and a large cylindrical fetish hole, and supporting a lengthy cylindrical torso with grooved spinal column and fragmentary conical breasts beneath broad rounded shoulders leading to fragmentary arms, the large spherical head with convex heart-shaped facial plane and slightly upturned mouth with carved teeth beneath a slender triangular nose pierced through the septum with a section of metal, with inset brasstacks for eyes beneath a domed forehead, and wearing a septipartite coiffure deeply incised on the reverse with varied geometric motifs, and a hole pierced through the crown transversely, an inverted triangular geometric panel incised on the lower abdomen and four vertical bands on incised scarification on the lower back, "Inagaki" base, two old labels on the underside; fine resinous blackened patina. Height 23 in. (58.4 cm.) Provenance: Andre Derain, Paris Paul Guillaume, Paris, #277. Durand-Ruel Gallery, New York, #534. Exhibited: Durand-Ruel Gallery, Paintings of Andre Derain and Sculptures of Gabon, New York, February-March 1933 The Museum of Modern Art, African Negro Art, New York, 1935. The University Museum, African Tribal Sculpture, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1956 Published: Sweeney, African Negro Art, New York, 1935, no.361. Walker Evans, African Negro Art, Photographic Portfolio, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935, no. 361. Plass, African Tribal Sculpture, Philadelphia, 1956, no. 28-D. Paul Guillaume"s personal archival photographic records (now in a private collection) shows a photograph of this Fang figure with Guillaume"s accompanying number "277" and the inscription "Durand-Ruel, #534", further documenting the spectacular history of this fine Fang female. The owner, a private collector from New England, purchased the figure from a French dealer in New York in the early 1950"s. Fang female reliquaries of this size and quality are rare and the reappearance of this extraordinary piece after so many years is important. Female figures are more often rendered by the northern Fang than by their neighbors to the south. The quality of sculpture in the head of this figure, including the broad rounded forehead and inset eyes and the finely worked coiffure with intricate incising on the numerous tresses can be compared to other heads of the northern Fang. See for example, the head now in the Musee d"Ethnographie in Neuchatel and another also from the collection of Paul Guillaume, now in the Musee de l"Homme (Perrois 1992:152 and 154).
Price: 200 500.00 USDIt's free to register now to view!
Estimate (low-high) : 100000 USD-150000 USDIt's free to register now to view!
