Vintage African Congolese Carved Wooden Nun

Published by Nevan O Shaughnessy on September 22, 2020September 22, 2020

PRESENTING A RARE piece of African Folk Art, namely, a Vintage African Congolese Carved Wooden Nun.

Made in the Congo circa 1920-30, this wooden (probably ebony) carved statue of a decent size, depicts a Catholic Nun in prayer.

Would have been carved in honor of the Belgian Catholic Missionaries that travelled to Africa in the late 19th Century to ‘convert’ the tribes to Catholicism.

This piece has all the NATURAL and AUTHENTIC signs of natural ageing. The patina is exactly what one would expect for a piece this old and the various cracks and minor losses throughout again help us in identifying it’s age.

This piece was bought in the Congo in the 1970’s whist on Safari there, along with other quality African and SE Asian antique pieces that he collected on his travels.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (pronunciation (help·info) French: République démocratique du Congo [kɔ̃ɡo]), also known as Congo-Kinshasa, Zaire, DR Congo, DRC (the official acronym), the DROC, or simply the Congo, is a country located in Central Africa. It was formerly called Zaire (1971–1997). It is, by area, the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa, the second-largest in all of Africa (after Algeria), and the 11th-largest in the world. With a population of over 101 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populous officially Francophone country in the world, as well as the fourth-most-populous in Africa, and the 15th-most-populous country in the world. Since 2015, the Eastern DR Congo has been the scene of an ongoing military conflict in Kivu.

Centred on the Congo Basin, the territory of the DRC was first inhabited by Central African foragers around 90,000 years ago and was reached by the Bantu expansion about 3,000 years ago. In the west, the Kingdom of Kongo ruled around the mouth of the Congo River from the 14th to 19th centuries. In the centre and east, the kingdoms of Luba and Lunda ruled from the 16th and 17th centuries to the 19th century.

In the 1870s, just before the onset of the Scramble for Africa, European exploration of the Congo Basin was carried out, first led by Henry Morton Stanley under the sponsorship of Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold formally acquired rights to the Congo territory at the Berlin Conference in 1885 and declared the land his private property, naming it the Congo Free State. During the Free State, his colonial military unit, the Force Publique, forced the local population to produce rubber. From 1885 to 1908, millions of the Congolese people died as a consequence of disease and exploitation. In 1908, Leopold, despite his initial reluctance, ceded the so-called Free State to Belgium, thus it became known as the Belgian Congo.

Congo achieved independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960 under the name Republic of the Congo. Congolese nationalist Patrice Lumumba was elected the first Prime Minister, while Joseph Kasa-Vubu became the first President. Conflict arose over the administration of the territory, which became known as the Congo Crisis. The provinces of Katanga, under Moïse Tshombe, and South Kasai attempted to secede. After the UN and Western governments refused his requests for aid and Lumumba stated that he was open to any country, including the Soviet Union, for assistance in the crisis, the US and Belgium became wary and oversaw his removal from office by Kasa-Vubu on 5 September and ultimate execution by Belgian-led Katangese troops on 17 January 1961.