Woman of Foutah-Djallon Femme du Foutah-Djallon

The original terracotta bust, shown in the Fine Arts section at the Muse des Colonies during the Paris Colonial Exhibition in 1931, is illustrated on the cover of L'Illustration, 27 june 1931. Plaster casts were taken from this sculpture, of which an example is the Faenceries de Quimper, where it was used to make an edition in stoneware the same year. Another is in the Muse de Brest, one of thirty plaster casts offered to the museum by the artist in 1980.
At the colonial exhibition, other Africanist sculptures were exhibited in the Pavillon de l'Afrique Occidentale Franaise. See Henry Branger, "L'Art d'Anna Quinquaud", op.cit., 25 July 1931. During the artist's second visit to West Africa, in 1930, she portrayed members of the different peoples living in the Fouta-Djallon region in French Guinea, notably the Coniagui, the Foulah and the Bassari. The woman represented here is a Bassari, identifiable by her hairstyle, body adornements and jewellery. For a commentary about this sculpture, see Monique Gessain "Les Bassari vus par les autres', Collection Bassari du Muse de l'Homme, Paris, Editions du Musum National d'Histoire Naturelle, 1997.