Provenance

Acquired circa 1940s by the family of a senior engineer with the Belgian administration residing in Congo from 1929 to 1959, thence to Brussels and Canada and by descent to the current owner.

Notes

Clement Serneels is a familiar name in South Africa. The artist resided here for short yet successful periods in the 1950s and 60s when he produced a diverse range of pretty landscapes, floral studies and nudes that were well-received at exhibitions.

However, it is his limited production of portraits from Congo and Ruanda-Urundi, as it was known before 1960, that truly distinguish the artist as a portraitist of excellence.

Recent research by a London-based art historian has uncovered a small but significant output of portraits of Rwandan aristocrats that have been annotated by the artist with identifying information on the subjects. In his catalogue entry, gallerist and art historian Will Elliott¹ of Elliott Gallery in London, has shown how Serneels recorded through his paintings some of the revered chiefs and members of the Rwandan elite from late 1930 to 1945. This period intersected with Irma Stern’s two visits to Congo (1942 and 1945). The presence of two artists in close proximity at that time, residing on the remote shores of the magnificent Lake Kivu, indicates a common ambition to paint the Rwandan royalty.

Like Stern, Serneels was a product of his time. He had completed overseas training from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels where he was a brilliant student, leading to a sponsorship from the Belgian government for a working visit to the Congo and Ruanda-Urundi from 1936 to 1937.

Drawn to the fabled exoticism and unmatched beauty of the wealthy pastoralists, he was one of the few Western painters to record the spectacular rituals and costumes of Rwandan elites. In 1938, Serneels rented a house to paint in on the shores of the great Lake Kivu, the picturesque heartland of Watusi territory, where he lived until 1945.

It is likely that Stern could have met the younger, attractive Serneels in the close social proximity of the small expatriate community in Kivu, or even at the Fete Nationale in Kigali—a much anticipated and well-attended annual highlight for the colonial population and Rwandan citizens alike.

There they witnessed a thrilling central African spectacle of royal processions, pageantry, dancing, drumming and parades of long-horned Sanga cattle bedecked with beadwork and phalanxes of Batwa forest hunters with their dogs. The Fete Nationale was carefully orchestrated by Tutsi chiefs for the benefit of the reigning monarch, HRH Rudahigwa, his young Queen Rosalie Gicanda, the royal mother-in-law, notables of the ruling elites, advisors, chiefs, colonial officials, state guests and citizens. On her first visit in 1942, Stern was invited into the Royal Box where she carefully scrutinised the scene, later to describe the impressive spectacle in euphoric vignettes in her publication Congo.²

The two artists may have unwittingly been competing for the attention of splendidly attired, beautiful members of the royal family to sit for portraits. Stern’s energetic production in Rwanda was an immediate sell-out in subsequent shows in both Elizabethville (Lumbumbashi) and South Africa. Serneels had similar success in Congo, South Africa and Belgium. If the two artists’ lives did intersect, there is only one ambiguous reference:

“…another painter—Belgian—very pleasant man—but his work is smooth and sweet. Of course they like his work immensely. It takes away a bit of the wild charm to have another artist working pretty things so near by”. ³

Stern’s acclaimed repertoire of Rwandan portraits is well documented. Serneels on the other hand, appears not to have been much of a correspondent nor an astute recorder of transactions. There are few supporting details of his modus operandi. The remaining tangible evidence occurs in a few striking and beautifully rendered oils of subjects who can be identified by his annotations that give depth and context to the historical figures thus portrayed.

Among them is the dazzling Chief Rwampungu’s Wife, described as:

“a mesmerising image...it can be seen to be one of the most significant paintings of a Rwandan, and indeed Central African sitter of this period, alongside depictions of the Tutsi royal family.”⁴

A recent inclusion into the archive of Serneels’ Rwandan portraits, is this striking likeness of Gubu Sisi, chief advisor and confidante to the King, HRH Rudahigwa. His extravagant crested coiffure further indicates elevated status. Amasunzu⁵ is a style of dressing the hair that is moulded into symbolic peaks, valleys and roundabouts—invoking ancestral territorial challenges that warriors faced in battle. Dressed as a nobleman in flowing cream robes with the suggestion of a copper neckpiece and set against a light cream background, Gubu Sisi creates a formidable presence of dignity, wisdom and beauty.

Despite the present war and past horrors of genocide, young Rwandans are reviving the Amasunzu hairstyles of antiquity as a sign of cultural renaissance of all that was admirable and beautiful in their culture.⁶ Indeed, in this magnificent portrait of Gubu Sisi the nostalgia of a noble past is ever present.

The contribution of Will Elliott of Elliott Fine Art, London is gratefully acknowledged as well as the permission to reproduce Chief Rwampungu’s Wife by Clement Serneels (1939) (Private Collection).

Carol Kaufmann

¹ Will Elliott (2021) Diverse Beauty: Portraits 1800 -1950, London: Elliott Fine Art.

² Irma Stern (1943) Congo, Pretoria: JL van Schaik.

³ Mona Berman (2003) Remembering Irma, Double Storey: Cape Town, page 88.

⁴ Will Elliott (2021) Chief Rwampungu’s Wife in Diverse Beauty: Portraits 1800-1950, London: Elliott Fine Art.

⁵ Picadoo (2017) Medium, Amasuzu Hair: A Rwandan Love Story, online, https://medium.com/@picadoonew/amasunzu-hair-a-rwandan-love-story-e31b61e3a370 , accessed 5 March 2025

⁶ Ibid.