FEATURE 94 FIGS. 10 and 11: Kwayep of Bamana, Bamileke maternity figure believed to have been commissioned by King N’Jiké II to commemorate the birth of his first child. Collected in Banganté, Grassfields, Cameroon, c. 1912. Wood, pigment. H: 61 cm. Collected by Henri Labouret. Musée du Quai Branly, Paris. Photo © 2012 Musée du Quai Branly, inv. 71.1934.171.607. Photo: Patrick Gries/Bruno Descoings/Scala, Florence. Kwayep’s kin had resettled, can also be considered as having been within the possible distribution reach of Kwayep’s art. This accounts for sculptures we can attribute to Kwayep being associated with regions as diverse as Bali- Nyonga, Bana, Banganté, and other neighboring chefferies. Kwayep’s Art and Workshop Kwayep’s visual motifs are, in a way, images of everyday life in a Bamileke chefferie such as Banganté. His renderings of people seem unposed, and the images suggest social roles and hierarchies. A combination of several elements reveals his hand. These include the shape of the eyes, a short nose, an open mouth that sometimes displays sharpened teeth, and a forehead that runs to a point above the nose. The back of the figure is balanced and composed, and there is mostly a sharp bend where the base of the back meets the buttocks. Kwayep’s works also display distinctive characteristics both in terms of the way in which they are decorated—for example, with pigments— and the way in which they are incised with ornamentation. This is particularly true of the geometric edge decoration on stools and calabash stands. Unquestionably the best known of Kwayep’s identified sculptures is the arresting figure of a mother and child, now in the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris (figs. 10/11).20 In 1934, two years before Egerton’s stay in
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