figure
- Museum number
- Af1952,11.1
- Title
- Series: Lower Niger Bronzes
- Description
-
Figure; lost-wax cast in bronze. In form of bearded male figure (hunter) kneeling on right proper knee with antelope around shoulders. Small dog with quadrangular bell around its neck stands to the right proper side. Hunter wears helmet and has quiver and object topped with Aro knot slung across body; bow held in left proper hand. Both figures stand on square platform base with openwork linear and circular decoration around all sides.
- Production date
- 16thC-18thC (?)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 37 centimetres
-
Weight: 6.50 kilograms
-
Width: 20.50 centimetres
-
Depth: 18.50 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- The term ‘Lower Niger Bronze Industry’ was created and first used by William Buller Fagg (1957, 1973, 1990) to identify a miscellaneous group of lost-wax cast objects which were stylistically and/or iconographically distinct from Igbo-Ukwu, Ife and Benin City pieces. The objects are associated with various locations in southern Nigeria, south of the confluence of Benue and Niger Rivers and between the borders with the Republic of Benin and Cameroon. They are thought to have been made prior to European contact, circa pre-1500 A.D. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Lower Niger Bronze Industries’ or ‘Lower Niger Bronzes’.
Fagg, William B. (1957) ‘Introduction’. In Plass, Margaret. Lost wax; metal casting on the Guinea Coast. London: London Institute of Contemporary Arts.
This figure is exceptional in being entirely in bronze (copper and iron alloy) rather than brass (copper and zinc).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
1977 London, BM, Animals in Art
1991 Feb-Apr, Norwich, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Man and Metal in Ancient Nigeria
2005 Jul-Sep, Monaco, Grimaldi Forum, Arts of Africa: 7000 Years of African Art
2012 15 September - 9 December, Royal Academy of Arts, Bronze
- Acquisition date
- 1952
- Acquisition notes
- Purchased by Kenneth John Hewett for £650 at Sotheby's on 16 January 1952, lot 348, and purchased by the British Museum from teh dealer J J Klejman of New York. It was published after its acquisition by William Fagg, ‘A Nigerian bronze figure from the Benin expedition’, ‘Man’, 1952, no.210. He stated that it had been collected by the late Admiral Stuart Nicholson, a lieutenant in the 1897 Benin expedition, presumably in Benin itself, and was previously unpublished.
See Collection FIle: Af1952,11.1.
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Af1952,11.1