The 16th century ivory mask and five other rare works from the Kingdom of Benin in Nigeria, consigned to Sotheby’s for sale next month, have been withdrawn. Due to be offered in London on February 17, the mask alone was estimated at £3.5m-4.5m.
According to a statement released by Sotheby’s, the items have been withdrawn at the request of the owners who were descendants of Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry Lionel Gallwey (1859-1949), a key participant in the controversial Punitive Expedition of 1897 when Benin City was plundered and much of the kingdom's art was destroyed, looted or dispersed.
Strong protests from the Nigerian authorities followed the announcement of the sale, but it is not clear whether the decision to withdraw the six lots came about as a result.
Having announced at the end of last year that the items were being offered at auction, Sotheby’s soon received complaints and an online petition against their sale was organised by a group called the Nigeria Liberty Forum.
Local government officials in Nigeria then publicly condemned the sale and Orobosa Omo-Ojo, an official in the state government of Edo, which is located in the South of Nigeria and contains the modern city of Benin, told the Nigerian press: “They [the sellers] should seek good counsel and refrain from selling the mask. Anything that makes them ignore this call [from] the Edo state government will [make us] use this as a starting point to protect our intellectual properties.”
It has now also emerged that Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan had taken a personal interest in the matter. An article in The Nigerian Tribune newspaper stated that the president “had been following the development and had already initiated moves to get the stolen artefacts returned to the country”.
Indeed, eyebrows were raised soon after the announcement of the sale as it is unusual for Sotheby's to offer this type of material in London. Typically tribal art is sold in Paris – Sotheby’s sold a caryatid stool from the Luba/Hemba people in the Congo for €4.8m (£4.36m) in the French capital on November 30.
However, according to the auctioneers, the consignor in this case specifically requested the sale to take place in the UK.
The withdrawal of the items is the latest chapter of controversy over items seized by the British from the Kingdom of Benin in the Punitive Expedition. As well as many other objects, around 1000 bronze plaques were taken of which around 200 passed into the British Museum in London.
Since independence in 1960, Nigeria has repeatedly called for the return of the bronzes (the country bought around 50 from the British Museum but has since ended its acquisition policy).
The mask itself was a particularly emotive object.
Produced specifically for the king or Oba, these ivory pendant masks are testament to Benin's golden age when the kingdom flourished economically, politically and artistically. The face is thought to depict Idia, the mother of the Oba Esigie (c.1504-1550), who was granted the title Iyoba (Queen Mother) in recognition of her help and counsel during military campaigns.
The masks were created at least in part as objects of veneration. The much-admired, time-worn and honey-coloured surface of Sotheby's mask attests to years of rubbing with palm oil.
Only four other ivory pendant masks of this type are known and are in institutional collections – housed in the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Linden-Museum in Stuttgart and the Seattle Art Museum (the closest to Sotheby's example).
The mask had not been seen for more than half a century and its whereabouts remained unknown until the descendents of Gallwey contacted Sotheby's last year.
Artist Jacob Epstein had encountered it in 1947 as part of a loan exhibition at the Berkeley Galleries in London entitled Ancient Benin and he asked the family if he could exchange it for one of his sculptures (an offer they declined).
It again formed part of an exhibition in 1951 – Traditional Sculpture from the Colonies at the Arts Gallery of the Imperial Institute.
Lieutenant Colonel Gallwey himself was appointed deputy commissioner and vice-consul in the newly established Oil Rivers Protectorate (later the Niger Coast Protectorate) in 1891.
Although it was never signed, it was the Gallwey Treaty that the British Government used to justify the Punitive Expedition of 1897, when Benin City was captured and burned.
Later in 1897 the booty was auctioned in Paris – the beginnings of a long and slow European reassessment of the value of West African art, but also the origins of a case that now parallels that of the Elgin Marbles.
Gallwey (who in 1913 changed his name to Galway, shortly before he was appointed governor of South Australia) remained in Nigeria until 1902 and the exact circumstances of his acquisitions are unknown. He is understood to have been given a large tusk by the Oba in 1892, but it is most likely the mask was acquired during the turmoil of 1897.
The five other Benin objects at Sotheby’s from the same source included a bronze sculpture of a type historically identified as tusk stand.
The twisted and hollowed form of this stand (estimated at £8000-12,000) suggested it served the same function as the more familiar bronze commemorative heads, as a stand for a carved ivory tusk on an altar created to honour a former ruler.
From the same collection, another tusk made for the altar of an 18th century Oba was estimated at £125,000-175,000. Carved with iconography repeated across many art forms in Benin (including the well-documented bronze plaques), it was also withdrawn from the February sale.
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