A dealer who resold an African mask for 28,000 times more than he bought it is on trial in France
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In France, a second-hand dealer is on trial for alleged fraud, because he bought an ancient African mask and then sold it for 28 thousand times the price.
A man bought a rare 19th century mask from an elderly couple. for 150 euros, and resold it for 4.2 million eurosreports the BBC and The Guardian.
A retired couple found a mask from Gabon in the house of their ancestor, who was a colonial governor. They sold it to a dealer in 2021, and found out the true value only six months later during an auction.
However, after the case was opened, the Gabonese government appealed to the court to stop the case and return the mask to its historic homeland.
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| Photo: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images |
It all started when an elderly couple living in Evreux-et-Loire decided to sell their holiday home in Garde in the south of France, but in order to do so they needed to remove all sorts of junk from the attic.
They turned to a dealer who bought several items, including a wooden mask that was gathering dust in the attic.
The house and mask belonged to the man’s grandfather, René-Victor Edward Maurice Fournier, who was a colonial governor in Africa.
The couple sold the mask for 150 euros, and six months later it turned out that its price was much higher.
The owners of the house read a notice in the newspaper about the sale at auction in Montpellier of a rare and valuable 19th century “Ngi” mask, made by the Gabonese Fang people. They recognized the mask in the photo.
The auction catalog said that there are about a dozen such masks in the world. And this one got to the French colonial governor René-Victor Fournier, “around 1917 under unknown circumstances – probably during a trip to Gabon.”
“This mask is rarer than Leonardo da Vinci’s painting”one of the experts told the French media at the time.
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The mask, which the auctioneers initially valued at 300,000 euros, was bought for 4.2 million euros.
The couple then sued to set aside the sale.
However, the seller of the artifact claims that when he bought it from the owners, he had no idea how valuable it was.
And the government of Gabon emphasizes that the mask was stolen and demands its return.
He asked the court to adjourn the ruling until his own lawsuit is heard.
This story once again raised the debate about the historical heritage of Africa, appropriated by the French colonizers.
Earlier in 2020, the French parliament voted to return valuable artifacts looted during colonial times to Senegal and Benin.
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