Female Figure with Twins

Contentment with a child on each knee is seen in this image of a Fante mother. She conveys Akan notions of physical beauty in her high, wide forehead, and the ringed neck of someone who is well-fed and healthy. Such images were sculpted by women artists for use in the funeral rituals of important men and women. In some areas, terra-cotta figures represented the dead and were placed on public view, richly adorned and paraded through town on a palanquin before being retired to outdoor sanctuaries.

Terracotta

18 1/4 x 7 3/4 x 9 in. (46.4 x 19.7 x 22.9 cm)

Gift of Katherine White and the Boeing Company

81.17.442

Provenance: Collection of George Preston (b. 1938), New York; sold to Katherine White (1929-1980), Seattle, Washington, 1967; bequeathed to Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 1981

Now on view at the Seattle Art Museum

Resources

Exhibition HistoryCleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Museum of Art, African Tribal Images: The Katherine White Reswick Collection, July 10 - Sept. 1, 1968 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Museum, Oct. 10 - Dec. 1, 1968). Text by William Fagg. Cat. no. 93 (as Female Figure with Children).

Los Angeles, California, Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, University of California, African Art in Motion: Icon and Act, Jan. 20 - Mar. 17, 1974 (Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, May 5 - Sept. 22, 1974). Text by Robert Farris Thompson. No cat. no., pp. 68-69, reproduced pl. 92 (as seated female with children).

Los Angeles, California, Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, University of California, The Arts of Ghana, Oct. 11 - Dec. 11, 1977 (Minneapolis, Minnesota, Walker Art Center, Feb. 11 - Mar. 26, 1978; Dallas, Texas, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, May 3 - July 2, 1978).

New York, New York, The African-American Institute, Art Exhibition Program, Oct. 10, 1986.

Montreal, Canada, Galerie Amrad African Arts, Tradition In Transition: Mother and Child In African Sculpture Past and Present, 1989.

Washington, D.C., National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Archetypes: Five Visual Themes in the Art of Africa (working title), 1989.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back, Feb. 7 - May 19, 2002 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Oct. 2, 2004 - Jan. 2, 2005; Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Atheneum, Feb. 12 - June 19, 2005; Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, Oct. 8, 2005 - Jan. 1, 2006; Nashville, Tennessee, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Jan. 27 - Apr. 30, 2006 [as African Art, African Voices: Long Steps Never Broke a Back]). Text by Pamela McClusky. No cat. no., pp. 37-38, reproduced pl. 12.

Published ReferencesLanger, Cassandra, Mother & Child in Art, New York: Crescent Books, 1992, p. 66, ill.

Galerie Amrad African Arts, Montreal, Canada, Tradition in Transition: Mother and Child in African Sculpture Past and Present, Esther A Dagan, 1989; : p. 79, fig. 80a.

National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Archetypes: Five Visual Themes in the Art of Africa, Dr. Herbert M. Cole, Fall, 1989. (catalog of the exhibition.)

Ezra, Kate, Mother and Child in African Sculpture, in African Arts, Vol. 20, No. 4, Aug. 1987, p. 81, illus.

African American Institute, New York, New York, The Art Exhibition Program, postcard (invitation to the opening), October 10, 1986.

Warren Robbins, African Art in American Collections, VOL. II, Smithsonian Press, 1985.

Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles, California, The Arts of Ghana, Herbert M. Cole and Doran H. Ross, 1977, p. 126, fig. 272. (catalog of the exhibition.)

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