FEATURE Chance Encounter: Of the untold numbers of master carvers who have contributed to African art history, only a handful 90 are recognized for their individual contributions and fewer still are remembered by name. One of the latter is the Cameroon sculptor Kwayep of Bamana (today rendered Bamena), who was born in the nineteenth century and is remembered in large part due to an encounter with the English author Frederick Clement Christie Egerton,1 who spent the summer of 1936 as the guest of N’jiké II, the tenth king of Banganté (fig. 1), in his chefferie, or royal village (fig. 2).2 Egerton published images of sculptures he identifies as by Kwayep, and a notable maternity figure carved by the latter under a commission from N’jiké II is preserved in the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. Other works by him also survive and this article both seeks to tell of the intersecting lives of Kwayep and Egerton, his primary documentarian, and to identify additional works by this significant Grassfields artist. Egerton in Banganté Clement Egerton found his way to Banganté, located in the French portion of Cameroon (fig. 3), “more by accident than by design.”3 He had originally intended to visit the British section of Cameroon but had been advised that Banganté was of particular interest because the residents were friendly and still “uncivilized.”4 He had studied in England and attended lectures by the famous anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski,5 one of the fathers of ethnographic fieldwork. Malinowski’s methods demanded that the researcher observe and participate in the everyday lives of the peoples he or she is studying over a long period of time. However, Egerton’s role in Banganté is not entirely clear. In his account of his residency in N’jiké II’s court, African Majesty: A Record of Refuge at the Court of the King of Banganté in the French Cameroons, first published in KWAYEP OF BAMANA By Bettina von Lintig 1938, he gives the impression of having been both an early tourist and a participant-observer. He described his ethnological studies in Banganté as somewhat “formless,” perhaps because he was more interested in the interpersonal relationships between the inhabitants of Banganté and because his approach was not scientific in a strict sense. Despite his documentation of Kwayep and his art, he seemed to be only peripherally interested in the arts and crafts of Banganté. Intended for a wide audience at home, Egerton’s book presented his observations in a conversational style, uncluttered by jargon and enlivened by humor. “I am conscious,” he acknowledged, “of all the defects in the presentation of such material as I have gathered,” 6 yet his descriptions and photographs of daily life in the king’s court effectively depict a moment when the impact of colonialism was significantly changing the place he was studying. In a mode reminiscent of the romanticized assumptions of European modernist artists, Egerton observed the lives, loves, and ways of life of the so-called primitive people of Banganté. He met and spoke with weavers, ritual experts, soothsayers, craftsmen, and artists (figs. 4 and 5). His accounts provide us with brief but important glimpses of life in Banganté, from which we can glean an impression of the importance that a master carver such as FIG. 1: F. C. C. Egerton, 1936, N’jiké II, Tenth King of Banganté. From Egerton, African Majesty, frontispiece. FIG. 2: F. C. C. Egerton, 1936, General View of the King’s Village (Chefferie) from the Old Market-Place. From Egerton, African Majesty, pl. 7.
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