FEATURE 100 My warmest thanks to David F. Rosenthal for his translation of this essay into English. My thanks go also to Barbara Thompson for her valuable suggestions and comments. This article is based on one that appeared in Cantor Arts Center Journal, vol. 7, Stanford University, 2010–11. NOTES 1. I have been unable to ascertain Egerton’s exact dates. Frederick Clement Christie Egerton was the son of a missionary and the author of numerous works, including A Handbook of Church Music (1909), and The Future of Education (1914), as well as of several books on Africa and Portugal. He also translated the novel Chin P’ing Mei from the Chinese original into English (The Golden Lotus London, 1939). One of his last works is titled Reaction, Revolution or Re-Birth (1943). He was a colonel; see “Publisher’s Note” in F. C. C. Egerton, African Majesty: A Record of Refuge at the Court of the King of Banganté in the French Cameroons (London, 1938), xi. Several illustrations in this article reproduce Egerton’s photographs published in African Majesty and are identified in the captions as “From Egerton, African Majesty.” Kwayep of Bamana appears in the literature with different spellings; “Bamana” is the historic spelling, which I will use. The place is now spelled Bamena. 2. The word chefferie denotes the king’s village, in which he lives with his wives and family. It is also used, occasionally, in the sense of “kingdom”; Egerton, African Majesty, 57. There were more than a hundred homes in the Banganté chefferie, all occupied by the king’s family. 3. Ibid., 86. 4. He was looking for people who were not “évolués” (evolved); see ibid., 15. King N’jiké II could still remember when, as a young child at the end of the nineteenth century, he saw the first Europeans to visit Banganté; ibid., 95–97. At the time of Egerton’s visit, N’jiké had been king for twenty-five years, and there had been power struggles before he acceded to his chiefly position and Banganté was under French colonial rule. 5. Ibid., 4. 6. Ibid., xiii. 7. Ibid., 66. 8. Oral communication from Christraud Geary, summer 2012. 9. Compare also Egerton, African Majesty (as in no. 1), pl. 60. Here Nana, king of Bazou, is wearing the same type of clothing, in an especially elaborate version. 10. Ibid., 218–19: “I had bought two curious mortars. They were brought from Bazou by a friend of Joseph Egerton’s local translator. This man was a Christian but his father had been a sorcerer, and the things he brought me had been lying in a heap of rubbish since his father’s time.” 11. Ibid., 219. 12. Ibid., 219. 13. C. Geary, “Crossroads and Open Borders: Creativity in the Cameroon Grassfields,” in Art in Cameroon: Sculptural Dialogues. Constellations: Studies in African Art, ed. M. T. Brincard, exh. cat. Neuberger Museum of Art, 2 vols. (New York, 2011), 2:6–19. 14. P. Harter, Arts anciens du Cameroun (Arnouville, 1986), 295. Since the requisite wood for carvings was not readily available in Banganté or the surrounding area, the two brothers, for whom Egerton was waiting, were delayed for several days. One of them was primarily a carpenter involved in house construction. The other began carving a sculpture in Egerton’s courtyard as he looked on. The carpenter and carver had brought with them a rough-hewn “hunk of wood, about three feet high.” They also brought their tools in a textile bag with a “Made in England” label on it. It contained “a couple of chisels” that the carver had inherited from his father, “a short club-like mallet of heavy wood, shaped like a pear,” and a machete.33 They produced a squat figure with a swollen stomach, holding its puffed cheeks with its hands, in a pose seen as expressing pain or sorrow. Although N’jiké II recognized the gesture, Egerton did not know what to make of the figure. He placed it on his veranda, alongside other locally made objects, as well as a number of imported ebony elephants designed to be bookends (fig. 26).34 Conclusion Despite the dearth of information available on individual artists in Cameroon—and elsewhere in Africa—from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, the accounts and photographs discussed in this essay provide an overview of a period of about thirty years. The examples I have presented tend to support the idea that the Bawok workshop tradition, within which Kwayep and others worked, did not impose a dichotomy between the traditional versus the innovative. Coexistence and mixture were accepted and practiced, as artists such as Kwayep blended the old with the new through the introduction of new techniques and tastes as opportunity arose. In the course of his life and artistic career, Kwayep adapted his work to the cultural changes taking place around him. If one compares the Cantor’s calabash holder or the figure of the boy, which were likely made in the early or mid-1930s, with the famous mother and child figure at the Musée du Quai Branly, it becomes apparent that a certain evolution in Kwayep’s artistic style took place. The mother and child and the Mannheim caryatid figure, both early works, seem to be more vibrant and dynamic in their conception than the other two pieces. The earlier objects, including the divination figure, are more freely sculpted, while the beautiful calabash holder and the figure of the boy appear more harmonious, even, and organized as sculptures. It can perhaps be said that Kwayep’s evolution and development consisted of substituting a more careful and planned artistic approach for the certain youthful verve evident in his earlier works. FIG. 22 (top): F. C. C. Egerton, 1936, Receptacle for Grain Carved by Kwayep of Bamana. From Egerton, African Majesty, pl. 72. FIG. 23 (above): F. C. C. Egerton, 1936, Stool Made by the Sculptor of Bamana. From Egerton, African Majesty, pl. 71.
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