This article was originally posted on the University of Cambridge's African Studies Library blog.
In late August, when the African Studies Library is at its quietest, Professor Conrad Lichtenstein walked through the door. “Do you have any Amharic language learning books?” he asked. Though we don’t, he and I began chatting and he told me he wanted to improve because his wife is Ethiopian. I sent him a few recommendations, including links to the Cambridge Language Centre, and that was that. But then I remembered a dusty secret that would lead to new collaboration and discovery in the following months.
The African Studies Library houses a brilliant, bright, and user friendly collection that’s accessed daily. Lesser known is that we have a basement archive where the largely uncatalogued collection comprises more than a few items with no known provenance. One such gem is a painting on canvas or cotton, roughly 2 meters wide and 1 meter tall, framed by simple white-painted wood.
The painting has lived in the archive for at least 7 years. Past efforts to de-mystify its meaning were unfortunately bogged down by other priorities. Now, it’s been brought back into the light.
I excitedly contacted Conrad and asked if he and his wife would like to come in and take a look at the painting. They graciously obliged and we met a few weeks later.
Mintwoded Ayele (Mekonen), Conrad’s wife, grew up in Gojjam, Ethiopia, and recognised the Ge’ez Amharic captions on the painting straight away, as well as each action of each frame. In 39 frames, we learned the painting depicts the yearly farming cycle in what Mintwoded believes is the North-Western federal state of Gojjam.
A rough translation of each frame’s meaning, based on the Amharic descriptions, can be found further down, and corresponds by number to the image below:
WHAT’S IN THE PAINTING?
Mintwoded provided a magnificent amount of detail as we walked through each action during this year long journey of farming in her home province. This type of painting, she pointed out, is not uncommon and appears to be relatively recent, though this hasn’t been confirmed.
She discerns the painting as being from Gojjam state based on the people depicted, especially the hair style of the women, their clothing, jewelry and their tattoos – see frames 30 and 31, amongst others, for example. Yonas Tadesse, an Ethiopian photographer, details tattooing practice in a 2022 Instagram post with the help of Qal Fessehaye:
“Until about a decade ago, young Ethiopian women from the rural areas used to have dark tattoos on their bodies. The practice of getting traditional tattoos was called Wukera, and it was particularly present in some areas of the Tigray and Amhara region of Ethiopia. Nowadays Wukera is a dying art…For many women it was a beauty trend, at the same time the practice was also used as a medical remedy. It was assumed that the tattoos were able to cure goiter, so many of the women got the tattoos done around the bump.”
Frame two shows two men and one woman traveling during the winter or rainy season. While the woman appears to be holding an umbrella, the two men are sheltering under a traditional reed “raincoat”. The two males are likely sheperds, or in this case, cowherds. According to Anna Parsons at the Anglo-Ethiopian society, these are: “Still seen in the Highlands today and the wearer can sit or squat on the ground and the raincoat stands up on the ground making a miniature tent.”
In frames 16 and 17 it’s unclear what these creatures are. Mintwoded inferred this ambiguity to be an active choice in the paintings creation. Selam Abdella, a Cambridge MPhil Development Studies Student who graciously lent an eye examining and translating the painting as well, suggested it’s a band of Geladas. According to National Geographic:
“Gelada monkeys live only in the high mountain meadows of Ethiopia—an environment very unlike those of their forest- or savanna-dwelling primate relatives. This high-altitude homeland is replete with steep, rocky cliffs. With their short and stumpy fingers, geladas are adept rock climbers. At night, the animals drop over precipice edges to sleep huddled together on ledges.”
EDIT: Through further collaboration, it appears that these are not in fact Gelada monkeys, but rather Hamadryas baboons (the former known for their red chests, while the latter have red bottoms).
Mintwoded and Selam also observed in frames 3, 10, and 13 the expression “ደቦ” (Debo) which signifies communal practice. Selam details this further:
“Debo is a practice in rural Ethiopia that’s a traditional way of carrying farm activities (weeding, threshing, harvesting etc.) communally. This practice can sometimes also extend beyond agricultural activities to renovating huts and other laborious tasks. There is a saying “50 lemons are a load for one person, but merely jewels for 50 people” so Debo is the materialisation of that expression.”
Frame 35 appears to show a man feeding a woman during a meal. This is known as ‘gursha’ in Ethiopia. Moyo Afrika detail this in a recent Instagram post:
“Gursha embodies the act of feeding someone a small bite using one’s hand. This act of sharing food goes beyond satisfying hunger; it symbolizes love, respect, and gratitude, making it a gesture of deep significance in Ethiopian culture. The Gursha ritual can be observed during various occasions, from communal gatherings and family celebrations to weddings and everyday interactions among friends and family members. When a host presents a dish, they meticulously select the most delectable portion and gently place it into the guest’s mouth with utmost care and respect.”
After the excitement of translating the painting, I wanted to learn more about the Ethiopian practice and its style. The style has been naturally called “sequential” or “narrative”, and is often juxtaposed with the word “comic” (I only became aware of the painting when the African Studies Library put up a small display in support CRASSH’s summer conference “Comics and the Global South“).
MORE ON STYLE
It appears the style was first a traditional way of telling biblical stories, from the lives of Jesus and Mary, to the various Saints and other tales.
From further collaboration with colleagues at the Anglo-Ethiopian society, it appears this is an antika painting. Antika supposedly derives from the the Italian antica and its formula generally shared the stylistic elements of church painting but were created on the basis of oral lore instead of church texts (Weinerth 2014, 52). Antika represents a shift and a merger between the traditional use of the sequential style to depict biblical stories and feudal daily life. These paintings, not limited to the sequential style, were originally made to sell to foreigners. As John Mellors, Treasurer for the society, put it:
“There used to be workshops full of artists producing antika paintings in Addis Ababa, with pattern books that you could order paintings from, but the market collapsed during the nearly 30 year long civil war after Haile Selassie was deposed in the early 70s. There are still a few artists making this type of work in Addis Ababa, but it’s not as popular – possibly because there is now a thriving market for the more lucrative ‘modern art’.”
Gebrekristos Solomon is one such painter that runs a studio in Addis Ababa (The shop is no longer outside the Taitu Hotel but has moved about 100 metres – to the top of Mundy Street). Gebrekristos followed in the footsteps of his grandfather, a great painter, who established their family in Gojjam. Could he or his family have a hand in this painting?
Hailu Woldeyes, an Ethiopian painter who died in the 1950s, was commissioned by Germany in the 1930s to produce antika paintings for an exhibition at the Frobenius Institute. One of these paintings is described as “Monkeys attacking the harvest” (Weinerth 2014, 64), inviting curiosity about the significance of this considering its presence in “A Year of Farming”. To date I can’t find an image of it anywhere.
To find out more about the history of this painting style, look at From empire to airport: on antika-painting in Addis Ababa of the 1930s by Jörg Weinerth (pages 51-82). It’s in the open access publication Ethiopian Images of Self and Other by Felix Girke (ed.).
SIMILAR WORKS FOUND THROUGH PRELIMINARY RESEARCH
Below are similar works found online. Those that come up in a quick Google search tend to be on auction house websites. The Horniman Museum in South London holds several similar pieces in its collection, while the British Museum holds a few as well. Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology holds similar paintings too.
I am eternally grateful to Mintwoded and her husband Conrad for translating this painting and inspiring me to learn more about it. I also extend my thanks to Selam Abdella for her enthusiasm and insights into this work of art. Thanks as well to Anne Parsons and John Mellors from the Anglo-Ethiopian Society for their valuable contributions.
If you have any information about this painting, the style it’s painted in, or if you’re interested in consulting it for study, please get in touch with us: afr@lib.cam.ac.uk.
RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY AND EXPLORATION
Eyob Derillo is an independent researcher and former curator Ethiopian collections at the British Library. His Twitter (X) explores many aspects of Ethiopian art.
Ethiopost records the history of Ethiopia through brilliant stamps.
Higgitt, Catherine, Heidi Cutts, Lynne Harrison, and Pippa Cruickshank. 2010. “The Image Revealed: Study and Conservation of a Mid-Nineteenth-Century Ethiopian Church Painting.” British Museum Technical Research Bulletin 4 (January).
Addis Fine Art is a leading African contemporary art gallery with locations in London and Addis Ababa. The gallery was founded in 2016 by Rakeb Sile and Mesai Haileleul, with a focus on artists from Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa, and its diasporas.
The Princeton Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Egyptian Miracles of Mary (PEMM) – (Open Access): a comprehensive resource for the 1,000+ miracle stories written about and the 2,500+ images painted of the Virgin Mary in these African countries, and preserved in Geʿez between 1300 and the present.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Higgitt, C. et al. (2010). “The Image Revealed: Study and Conservation of a Mid-Nineteenth-Century Ethiopian Church Painting.” British Museum Technical Research Bulletin 4 (January).
Leroy, J. (1967). Ethiopian Painting, in the Late Middle Ages and During the Gondar Dynasty. Translated from the original Italian by C. Pace. London: Merlin.
You can view this at Cambridge’s University Library, and the African Studies Library holds an Italian version.
WeinerthIn, J. (2014). “From empire to airport: on antika-painting in Addis Ababa of the 1930s” in Girke, F. ed. Ethiopian Images of Self and Other. Schriften Des Zentrums Für Interdisziplinäre Regionalstudien 2. Halle an der Saale: Univ.-Verl. Halle-Wittenberg.
Written by Ben Carson, Senior Library Assistant to the Centre of African Studies Library, Cambridge University.
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