Portrait of a Marabout with Decorations
Not on view
This early suwer (or souwere, Wolof for reverse glass painting) portrays a personage bearing golden military or stately decorations on his green cloak or burnous – his white turban and robe suggesting that he is to be identified as a marabout, a Muslim spirital leader or religious teacher. Since at least the 1910s, when French colonial officers started monitoring and destroying imported lithographs with pan-Islamic religious and political themes that were perceived as hostile to their occupation, glass paintings in Senegal served to disseminate Islamic religious imagery. The medals on the personage's chest may add more complex nuances to the interactions between local authorities and colonizers.
