Leon Underwood (Figures in Wood of West Africa, London, 1947, reprinted 1964, fig.38B) illustrates a very similar maternity figure to the Herman example, and describes it as from the Fang of Gabon. The attribution was doubtless given to him by the owner, the artist Blair Hughes-Stanton, who bought it in Paris in 1928 and was a good friend of the expert in African art at the British Museum, William Fagg.

In 1976 Hughes-Stanton consigned his maternity figure to Christie's in London for sale (12 October, lot 82), where Fagg was by then a consultant. The figure had been published by Louis Perrois (La Statuaire Fang, Paris, 1972, p.182, pl.57) who had only seen a poor photograph of it from which he suggested that it could be from the Ngumba, a group near the coast of southern Cameroon that was being assimilated by the Fang. Since 1976 Fagg was shown another, similar, maternity figure with even more distinctive Teke features, and the present example. He concluded that all three figures were definitely from the northern Teke.