It was effervescence this Saturday at the Montpellier auction house. Listed at 500,000 euros, a 19th century Fang wooden mask belonging to a secret society in Gabon finally found a buyer at 4.2 million. Costs included, the final bidder will pay 5.25 million euros for this work.
There were 10 bidders to acquire a Fang mask from Gabon at auction in Montpellier, this Saturday afternoon.
This work of art, dated with carbon 14, from the 19th century is an exceptional object according to experts in African art. It is now a rare piece that has broken a sales record. There would be only about ten of this kind in the world.
This mask of judgment which was used to dispense justice had been in the attic of a house in the Hérault for more than 100 years.
The bidding lasted less than 10 minutes to reach 4.2 million euros. The mask was purchased over the phone. The previous record sale in Montpellier was a painting by Pierre Soulages, fetched €1.6 million in 2021.
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It’s a mask from Governor Fournier’s Ngil secret society, he smashed his estimate of 300,000/400,000€ to reach 5,250,000€ (i.e. 4.2 million excluding selling costs). It is very close to the world record for a Fang mask held by that of the Vérité collection, which sold 5.75 million euros in June 2006.
This mask carved at the end of the 19th century, acquired in Gabon between 1917 and 1918, was brought back by Governor René-Victor Edward Maurice Fournier (1873-1931), and kept in the family home since the 1920s.
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“The purity of its lines and the arrangement of its volumes give it the rank of an icon in the very limited corpus of masks from the Ngil society. It completes the dozen or so other reference specimens known through museums and museums. Western collections” explains the Montpellier auction house.
Indeed, the traditional rites of customary justice of the Ngil society, which roamed the villages of Gabon to flush out troublemakers, were abandoned in the 1920s, which put an end to the creation of the instruments of this institution.
At the time of the sale, a delegation of Gabonese interrupted the auction. “You are going to take out your checks, when it is a mask that was stolen during colonization” throws one of them in the middle of the room.
According to them, this mask belongs to the cultural heritage of Gabon, it has nothing to do with a private collection, outside of Africa.
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