Woman and Child (mid- to late 1800s): Art, History and Details

Woman and Child (mid- to late 1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This mother-and-child figure was probably part of a cult concerned with the treatment of infertility. Both her jewelry and her seated pose indicate that the woman occupied a high rank in her community. Her miter-shaped hairstyle, chiseled teeth, and raised body scars--considered to be marks of beauty and perfection--signal that the woman incarnates the founding ancestor of a kinship group.

Object facts

• Title: Woman and Child
• Date: mid- to late 1800s
• Culture: Africa, Central Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Yombe-style carver
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Wood
• Dimensions: Overall: 26.2 x 9.2 x 7.4 cm (10 5/16 x 3 5/8 x 2 15/16 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 2003.35

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Kerchache, Jacques, Jean-Louis Paudrat, Lucien Stéphan, and Françoise Stoullig-Marin. 1993. Art of Africa. New York: H.N. Abrams, fig. 235.
• Debbaut, Jan, Dominique Favart, G. van Geertruyen, and Palais des beaux-arts (Brussels, Belgium). 1988. Utotombo : L’art D’afrique Noire Dans Les Collections Privées Belges : Société Des Expositions Du Palais Des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles, 25 Mars-5 Juin 1988 Ed. française ed. Bruxelles: Palais des beaux-arts, cat. 159.
• "A selection of 2003 museum acquisitions." Apollo. Dec. 2003, vol. 158, no. 502. p. 48

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.