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bean” eyes and the fl eshy mouth are reminiscent of the Punu-Lumbu canon. Horizontal scarifi cations go from the eyes to the temples, as do two vertical lines that represent tears, as are also seen on Vuvi masks. A fi nal old mask in the Musée Dapper is painted in opposing quarters like Aduma masks (fi g. 25). A characteristic detail is the small mirror on the black triangle. The forehead protrudes and the large, pointed open mouth is chinless and reminiscent of that of a chimpanzee or a gorilla. Galwa masks with black, red, and white triangles on them are essential elements of the okuji and bwiti initiation associations and belong to them. These associations are their society’s armature and are the repositories for the history of their peoples and clans. In the Middle Ogooué cultural region, where contacts were frequent with the Upper and Lower Ogooué areas, the masks display sculptural infl uences from those places, but at the same time they testify to the power of the imagination of the Galwa, whom Mary Kingsley describes as a proud and noble people. Many of these nineteenth-century masks may reasonably 108 be seen as representative of a Galwa golden age, a period of prosperity that lasted from 1860 to 1873 under the rule of their King Nkombe, the Sun-King, who dominates Galwa history. Having found their place in prestigious major collections, and exhibited today in the most important museums of Europe and the United States, the masks of the Galwa are now part of humanity’s cultural heritage. Now, what about the Galwa statues brought back by Alfred Marche and the Marquis de Compiègne, which were drawn by Louis Breton (fi g. 1)? * Any information on the provenance or destiny of this object would be of great value to the author, as would a photograph of it. Please contact Tribal Art magazine if you can help. NOTES 1. Abbot Raponda-Walker quoted by Gilles Sautter, De l’Atlantique au fl euve Congo une géographie du souspeuplement, 1966, Paris, p. 741. 2. Louis Perrois and Charlotte Grand-Dufay, Art Tribal, 2005, pp. 104–105. 3. Joseph Ambouroue-Avaro, Un peuple gabonais à l’aube de la colonisation, le Bas-Ogooué au XIXe siècle, 1981, éditions Karthala, pp. 215–220. 4. Hachette published Alfred Marche’s Trois voyages dans l’Afrique occidentale in 1882. Plon published the Marquis de Compiègne’s L’Afrique équatoriale en deux volumes in 1876. 5. Annie Merlet, Légendes et histoire des Myéné de l’Ogooué, Libreville, Gabon, 1990, p. 121. Merlet also published other old nineteenth-century texts, most notably on Nkombe, the sun-king, based on accounts by Alfred Marche and the Marquis of Compiègne. 6. Trente mois au continent mystérieux Gabon-Congo et Côte occidentale d’Afrique, 1899, Paris, Berger-Levrault & Cie, pp. 147–149. 7. Payeur-Didelot, Trente mois au continent mystérieux, Paris, Berger-Levrault, 1899, pp. 144–149. 8. Mary Kingsley, Une odyssée africaine, 1993, éditions Payot & Rivages, pp. 152–153. 9. Raponda-Walker, Les tribus du Gabon, Société des recherches congolaises, 1924, pp. 73–75. 10. Joseph Ambouroue-Avaro, Le Bas-Ogooué au XIXe siècle, Karthala – C.R.A., 1981, pp. 51–53. 11. Op. cit., p. 19. 12. Léopold Codjo Rawambia, “Histoire des Galwa du Gabon,” doctoral thesis, 1993, Paris I, p. 137. 13. Pastor Ogoula-M’Beye, Galwa ou Edongo d’antan, translated from the Galwa and annotated by Paul-Vincent Pounah, 1978, imprimerie Loriou, Fontenay-le-Comte. 14. Léopold Codjo Rawambia, op. cit., p. 183. 15. Otto Gollnhofer and Roger Sillans, La mémoire d’un peuple. Ethno-histoire des Mitsogho ethnie du Gabon central, Paris, Présence Africaine, 1997, p. 186. 16. Léopold Codjo Rawambia, op. cit., p. 245. 17. Alfred Marche, quoted by Annie Merlet, Légendes et histoire des Myéné de l’Ogooué, 1990, Libreville / Paris p. 122. 18. Ambouroue-Avaro, quoted by François Gaulme, Anyambye. “Note sur l’évolution religieuse en Afrique centrale,” L’Ethnographie, vol. LXXVI, 1980, no. 83, p. 264. 19. Léopold Codjo Rawambia, op. cit., pp. 363–364. 20. Pastor Ogoula-M’Meye, op. cit., p. 141. 21. J. Ambouroue-Avaro, op. cit., p. 119. 22. Father Léon Lejeune (1860–1905), Superior at the Lambaréné mission, “Superstitions africaines, le ntilo et le yaci au pays des Galoas,” Annales apostoliques, no. 35, January 1895, pp. 29–35. 23. Mary Kingsley, Une odyssée africaine, 1993, Paris, Petite Bibliothèque Payot / Voyageurs, p. 159. 24. Léopold Codjo Rawambia, op. cit., p. 372. 25. Father Léon Lejeune, op. cit. pp. 29–35. 26. Le Gabon de Fernand Grébert, 1913–1932, Musée d’Ethnographie Genève, Genève, 2003, no. 132. 27. Archives du Musée d’Ethnographie de Neuchâtel. Excerpt from Louis Perrois, L’esprit de la forêt, terres du Gabon, p. 91. 28. Otto Gollnhofer and Roger Sillans, “Le symbolisme chez les Mitsogho. Aspects de l’anthropomorphisme dans la société initiatique du Bwete,” Systèmes de signes. Textes réunis en hommage à Germaine Dieterlen, Hermann (ed.), Paris, 1978, p. 233. 29. Masques, Musée Dapper, Paris, 1995, p. 365, plate V, fi g. 42b. 30. Masques, Musée Dapper, Paris, 1995, p. 366. FIG. 25 (top right): Mask. Galwa, Gabon. Wood, vegetable fi ber, kaolin, red ocher, charcoal. H: 34 cm. Musée Dapper, Paris, inv. 4546. © Musée Dapper. Photo: Hugues Dubois. FIG. 26 (bottom right): Mask. Galwa, Gabon. Wood, kaolin, pigment. H: 24 cm. Ex Nicole and John Dintenfass. Sotheby’s Paris, 23 June 2006, lot 34. Private collection. Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s. bean””flfl scarififi fifi fifi FEATURE


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