Gaston Heenen, before 1932

Mr. Guy Langouche and his wife Claire Goddart (the piece having been given to Claire Goddart by her godfather, former Governor Gaston Heenen)

Jacques Van Overstraeten, Brussels

Pierre Dartevelle (1940-2022), Brussels

Jean-Jacques Rotthier Collection (1932-2009), Brussels, then by descent

Neyt (François), La redoutable statuaire Songye d’Afrique centrale/Songye. The Formidable Statuary of Central Africa, Anvers : Mercatorfonds, 2004, p.198, n° 164 

This important Songye figure from the Rotthier Collection belongs to the oeuvre of a master whose hand is today known through only two surviving works. Its most distinctive feature lies in the way the sculptor enhanced the figure’s physiognomy with a row of small protuberances framing the oval of the eyes.

The second statue, which can be attributed to the same artist with a high degree of certainty, was included among the one hundred and thirty-three works exhibited in Sacri Spiriti Songye, held in the Palatine Chapel of the Maschio Angioino in Naples. It was collected before 1920 by Vice-Governor Gaston Heenen (see lde Grunne( Bernard) & Pezzoli (Gigi), Sacri spiriti Songye, Naples, Silvana Editoriale, 2022, cat. 61).

A comparison between these two sculptures and a third figure preserved in the collections of the AfricaMuseum, a typical Kalebwe example collected by Dr. J.-A. Fourche in 1940, provides an interesting clue to the origin of this motif. The AfricaMuseum figure features rows of copper tacks surrounding the oval of the eyes, a detail that may explain the sculpted ornamentation found on the two statues attributed to this master (see Backe (Viviane), Bouttiaux (Anne-Marie) & Dubois (Hughes), Le Sensible et la Force, M.R.A.C., Tervuren, 2024, p. 10, cat. 16).