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Sotheby Parke Bernet & Co., 1980. Hardcover, 67 pp.; 27 cm; illustrated with black-and-white and color plates. Illustrated Catalogue 8991, code name "UDO," for the sale held at 34 and 35 New Bond Street, London, Monday 16th June 1980. Introduction by Philip J. C. Dark.
In Good condition with a Good dust jacket. Green paper over boards, lettered in black on front cover and spine; light bumping to head of spine with light creasing to top corner of text block, light scuffing and age toning. Binding tight. Faint pencil notation in upper corner of front free endpaper; pages lightly toned, otherwise unmarked. Bronze-brown dust jacket printed in gold and white; short tear at head of rear panel, several small nicks and tears and creasing along edges, moderate scuffing, fading and discoloration. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Auction catalogue of 24 lots of Benin bronze and ivory court art from a collection formed from 1954 by a European collector, identified in museum provenance records as Adolph Schwartz of Amsterdam. Each lot has a full description, commentary, exhibition history (Allen Memorial Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Arts Council 1967) and literature references. Highlights include an early bronze memorial head of an Oba (lot 8, dated first half 14th century), a five-figure warrior chief plaque (lot 15, circa 1600), an ivory double bell (lot 22, first half 16th century, described as one of five known and the only one still in private hands), and a carved ivory tusk (lot 24). Lots from the sale are now in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which bought the plaque of a girl with a leopard (lot 17) here, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dark's introduction surveys the history and chronology of Benin art and the 1897 British punitive expedition that dispersed it, with a bibliography.