Strauss & co - 13 November 2017, Johannesburg

250 325 Ernest Mancoba SOUTH AFRICAN 1904–2002 Head of a Mapedi carved teak height: 17 cm R70 000 – 100 000 PROVENANCE A gift from the artist to his uncle, Reverend Alvin Mangqangwana. EXHIBITED Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, Hand in Hand , 1994–1995. The Gold of Africa Museum: Cape Town, In the Name of all Humanity: The African Spiritual Expression of Ernest Mancoba , 2006. Among Mancoba’s wood sculptures, done before he left South Africa to further his studies in Paris, there are two documented pieces, done roundabout 1936, without inscriptions. These are Head of a Mapedi (Lot 325), and Madonna . Both belonged to members of the artist’s family: the former to the Reverend Alvin Mangqangwana, the artist’s uncle, and the latter to Doctor Patiswa Njongwe, his cousin. The former, a portrait, conforms to natural appearances and the latter not; therefore foreshadowing the future radical change in Mancoba’s oeuvre. Head of a Mapedi was a gift to his uncle, his mother’s brother. It was this uncle who arranged for Ernest to attend the well-known Diocesan Training College at Grace Dieu near Polokwane. There Mancoba qualified as a teacher, eventually taught there and also found his calling as a sculptor. His first major piece, The African Madonna (Johannesburg Art Gallery), was carved at the college in 1929. Mr H Mangqangwana of Orlando East inherited Head of a Mapedi from his father and until his death it was a revered piece in his home. He declined many a lucrative offer. It featured in Hand in Hand the retrospective exhibition of Mancoba and Ferlov which was held at the Johannesburg Art Gallery from 1994. Ernest Mancoba inscribed his sculptures with E Mancoba , Ernest Mancoba , E M , N E Mancoba and R Mancoba (Ro … ) . The first three are self- explanatory, the two remainders not. A Shangaan praise-singer, who was a fellow mineworker of the artist’s father, Irvine, visited the Mancobas at their home on the East Rand to pay his respects to the parents and their first born. When he saw the baby he called out ‘Ngungunyana!’ and chanted the praises dedicated to the great chief of the Shangaans, Ngungunyana. He asked Irvine to call the boy by that name. Unfortunately the infant had already been christened Ernest Methuen Mancoba. Nevertheless the Shangaan name stuck and at the training college at Grace Dieu schoolgirls referred to him as ‘king of the Shangaans’. In 1932, on completion of the sculpture St Augustine of Canterbury for the Church of Saint Augustine in Belvedere, Kent, England, Mancoba inscribed N E Mancoba on the base of the piece. Thus he acknowledged his African name and reconciled two perspectives: African and Occidental. R Mancoba (Ro…) refers to Ronald – called Ronnie – the artist’s younger brother and last born (c.1922) of Irvine and Florence Mancoba’s seven children. In 1934 – two years prior to the making of Head – Mancoba carved a double portrait of two boys: Ronnie and his friend. Mancoba recalled they were not keen on posing; eventually he persuaded them with the promise of sweets on completion of the piece. He significantly entitled the carving The Future of Africa (also documented Africa to be and Future Africa ). Similar to St Augustine of Canterbury this piece was carried out in the typical, true-to- nature style of the period. Whilst in Cape Town in 1935 Mancoba continued on page 252