136 No Mere Plaything A TSHOKWE ROYAL FIGURE OBJECT history By Sebastian Miller As the market for top-quality African art continues to rise, it’s an increasingly rare occasion when a previously unknown masterpiece appears. When this does happen, the sculpture doesn’t come from Africa—at least not recently—but instead most often has been sitting somewhere under Western stewardship, sometimes for generations, unrecognized and undocumented. We don’t often get to hear the stories of these objects, but the history of the Tshokwe figure illustrated here (figs. 3 and 9) is a particularly engaging one that is worth relating. Sometime in the early 2000s, Alberto Mocado and two other Lisbon-based antique dealers visited a home belonging to the VillasBoas family, where they had arranged to buy some eighteenth-century ceramics. In looking around the FIG. 1 (left): Standing figure of Chibinda Ilunga. Tshokwe, Angola. 19th century. Ex private collection, Lisbon, by 1924(?); Pierre Vérité, before 1950; (Rive Gauche, Paris, June 2006). Wood. H: 49 cm. Museum Rietberg, Zurich, through Novartis, inv. 2007.1. FIG. 2 (below right): Seated chief playing a thumb piano. Tshokwe, Angola. Before 1869. Collected in Angola by Count Admiral Francisco Antonio Gonçalves Cardoso (1800–1875), Governor of Portuguese Angola (1866–1869); by descent to his family until before 1981; (Loudmer-Poulain, Paris, June 24, 1981, no. 153); Entwistle Gallery, London, from 1981; an American collector, on loan to Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, until 1988; Entwistle Gallery, London, as agent, 1988. Wood (Uapaca), cloth, fiber, beads. H: 42.5 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, inv. 1988.157. FIG. 3 (far right): Standing male figure. Tshokwe, Angola. 19th century. Ex a Catholic mission in Angola, until 1934–35; Manuel Fuscini VillasBoas, Portugal, 1934–1935; by descent to his family until c. 2003; Alberto Mocada, Portugal, 2003; Alain de Monbrison, Paris, 2003. Wood, red pigment, dark surface treatment. H: 49.5 cm. Private collection. Photo: Don Tuttle.
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