Figure

Maurice-Auguste-Eugène-Charles, Marie-Ghislain, Count Lippens (1875-1956), Belgium, by 1920-1956 [1];

Purchased from Art and Ethnography from Asia, Africa, the Americas and the Pacific, Christie's South Kensington, December 4, 1984, lot 210, by Nadya Levy (1929-2021), Antwerp, 1984-1985;

Purchased from Levy by Marcel de Toledo (b. 1947), Antwerp, 1985-1998 [2];

Purchased from de Toledo by Pierre Dartevelle (b. 1940), Brussels, Belgium, 1998 [3];

Purchased from Dartevelle by the dealer Marc Leo Félix, Brussels, Belgium, stock no. FX 971264, by March 10, 1998-October 6, 1998 [4];

Purchased from Félix by Shirley and Barnett C. Helzberg, Jr., Mission Hills, KS, October 6, 1998-2013;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2013.

NOTES:

[1] Maurice Lippens was a Belgian who served as Governor General of the Belgian Congo from 1921-1923 and later served as President of the Belgian Senate. He was the author of Notes sur le gouvernement du Congo 1921-1922 (Gand: Herckenrath, 1923). Also see note 4.

[2] According to Marcel de Toledo, in an email to MacKenzie Mallon, Specialist, Provenance, February 4, 2022, NAMA curatorial files.

[3] Ibid.

[4] According to Marc Leo Félix, in documentation provided at the time of the object’s purchase, “It was collected prior to 1920 by Count Lippens who was on an ornithological mission in the area and received it as a present from the Mangbetu king. Upon [Lippens’] death, it was sold to a Belgian dealer, who then sold it to the famous Antwerp ivory collector M. de Toledo. When he had financial troubles, de Toledo sold it to a Belgian dealer from whom I acquired it.” According to the African Heritage Documentation & Research Centre, www.ahdrc.eu, object no. 0033678, de Toledo started collecting in 1982. Félix’s stock number is written on a label on the underside of the object’s base.