Mar 10, 2011 - Sale 2239

Sale 2239 - Lot 161

Price Realized: $ 3,360
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
AN EXQUISITE BRONZE (ART.) MATTON, ARSENE. Mere Congolese avec son Fils. (Congolese Mother with Child.) Bronze, 12 inches high, signed "A. Matton" on the base. Belgium, circa 1900-1910
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Arsene Matton, (1873-1953), a Belgian artist, visited the then Belgian Congo twice, producing a series of beautiful bronze sculptures based on the tribal people he observed there. The Turveren Congo Museum in Brussels has two large gilded bronzes by Matton in its main hall. King Leopold of Belgium mounted what is probably the largest single looting of any African nation in modern history during the last years of the "Scramble" to colonize by Western nations. Belgium's "Red Rubber Regime" (1885-ca1910) removed untold wealth from the rich Congo basin over a remarkably short period of time. The roots of the tragic Hutu-Tutsi massacre of 1994 can be traced to this period.