In 2021, a couple sold a mask to a trader for €150, and it was later sold for €4.2 million to an undisclosed bidder. The couple’s attempt to get the sale of the “extremely rare” African mask cancelled in court was unsuccessful after they realised it was worth millions of euros.
In September 2021, the couple, who were in their 80s, sold the wooden mask to a trader of used goods. The transaction included other antiques, such as African artefacts that the pair had stored at their second home in southern France.
The items were thought to be of little worth because they had belonged to an ancestor who had been a governor in colonial Africa.
The mask was sold for €150 by the couple, who reside in Eure-et-Loir, a suburb of Paris, but in March 2022, it went for €4.2 million at an auction in Montpellier, a southern city, to an undisclosed buyer.
There are only around ten such masks left in the world, according to the auctioneers, who called it “an extremely rare 19th-century mask, property of a secret society of the Fang people in Gabon,” an ethnic Bantu group. French TV was informed by an auction house representative that “this type of mask is even rarer than a Leonardo da Vinci painting.”
The pair claimed there had been a “authentication error” and swiftly applied for an order to revoke the original sale.
Additionally, they asserted that at the time of purchase, the buyer of the mask was aware of its true value.
However, the court denied the plea, stating that the couple had not tried to get the mask appraised before selling it.
The court dismissed their claim, finding that it was typified by “inexcusable negligence and frivolity” and that they were not entitled to any compensation.
It further decided that they had not been duped by the antiquities dealer, who was by no means an authority in African art.
The couple’s children rejected the dealer’s offer to settle the dispute out of court, even though it included €300,000—the starting bid for the auction.
Following the verdict, Frédéric Mansat Jaffré, the couple’s attorney, stated that his clients were “dumbstruck” by the outcome and were thinking about filing an appeal.
A further move by the Gabonese government to void the transaction and return the mask was also dismissed by the court.
Attending the auction in protest, members of the Gabon community in southern France demanded that the mask be returned to the central African nation and that it never should have been placed up for sale in the first place.
Solange Bizeau of the Collectif Gabon Occitanie, who together with other Gabon community members had demonstrated against the auction earlier this year, told the Guardian: “Today this court case is about the grandchildren of the governor versus a secondhand dealer. But neither of them is legitimate in terms of this mask. What we want is the restitution of this mask to Gabon.
“This mask has a soul, it was used to establish justice in our villages. The discussion in court has been about morality, but what about the morality of the spoliation of works of art and our dignity? Where is the morality in that?”
