H x W x D: 39.5 x 19 x 23 cm (15 9/16 x 7 1/2 x 9 1/16 in.)
Type:
Figure
Geography:
Oyo state, Nigeria
Date:
Early to mid-20th century
Label Text:
Yoruba figurative sculptures for shrines dedicated to various deities often depict female devotees accompanied by children and holding bowls for kola nuts or other offerings. This particular example, according to an inscription on a 1948 field photograph by Kenneth Murray, was a gift to Orisha Oko, an orisha (deity) associated with fertility throughout Yorubaland but particularly in the Oyo region.
The sculpture is attributed to an unknown artist in Irawo, an ancient village near the town of Oyo. Originally two children flanked the kneeling mother, who carries an infant on her back. The bowl probably had a lid carved in the form of the upper body of a fowl. In this work the artist created the image of a fecund woman who is testimony to the god's power to bestow fertility and insure successful childbirth.
Description:
Wood kneeling female figure holding a bowl with a child on her back and one to her right. The figure is distinguished by a five-lobed coiffure tinged with blue indigo and a head-tie. Her face is ornamented with three parallel elliptical scars on the forehead and both cheeks, her projecting eyes have deeply carved elliptical pupils and projecting breasts support what appears to be a beaded pendant "strung" on multiple strands. The carver has captured details of jewelry and clothing on all figures: a rectangular pendant on the back child, a pendular pendant on the child on the side, a cloth child-carrier and bracelets on all three figures. The base of the figure is, however, highly eroded: a fourth child to her left and a lid for the bowl, carved in the form of the upper body of a fowl, have been lost. Moreover, the bowl appears to terminate in the eroded legs and feet of a chicken. There is a vertical fracture extending down the lower side of the figure.
Provenance:
Samir Borro, Côte d'Ivoire, -- to 1973
Emile M. Deletaille, Brussels, 1973 to 1985
Exhibition History:
Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, New Hampshire, April 1-August 10, 2008, Davis Museum, Wellesley College, September 17-December 14, 2008, San Diego Museum of Art, January 31-April 26, 2009
Icons: Ideals and Power in the Art of Africa, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., October 25, 1989-September 3, 1990
La Maternité dans les arts premiers; Het Moederschap in de Primitieve Kunsten. Société génerale de banque, May 13-June 30, 1977
Published References:
Cole, Herbert M. 1989. Icons: Ideals and Power in the Art of Africa. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, p. 91, no. 102.
Lawal, Babatunde. 2012. Visions of Africa: Yoruba. Milan: 5 Continents Editions, pp. 84, 132, no. 17.
McIntosh, Marjorie Keniston. 2009. Yoruba Women, Work, and Social Change. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p. 91, no. 5.2.
National Museum of African Art. 1999. Selected Works from the Collection of the National Museum of African Art. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, p. 70, no. 43.
Société Génerale de Banque. 1977. La Maternité dans les arts premiers; Het Moederschap in de Primitieve Kunsten. Société génerale de banque, p. 48, no. 25.
Thompson, Barbara. 2008. Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body. Hanover: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College with Seattle: University of Washington Press, no. 29.
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