African ‘Queen’ Challenges Record : Art: Cameroon sculpture from the Franklin collection, immortalized in a ‘30s photo by Man Ray, may set a new auction mark for African art.

The Harry A. Franklin Family Collection of African art will be sold at Sotheby’s New York on April 21. The renowned Los Angeles collection, which has been built over 50 years and exhibited around the world, is expected to bring in excess of $5 million, though no firm estimate has been released by the auction house.

The most valuable of the 431 lots to be sold is a Cameroon figure of an earth cult priestess, the “Bangwa Queen.” The expressive, 32-inch-tall wood sculpture may break the record of $2.08 million for African art, set in July for a Benin bronze head.

“The ‘Bangwa Queen’ should bring at least $1 million to $2 million, but you never know,” said Bernard de Grunne, director of Sotheby’s tribal art department. The record-setting bronze head brought more than three times its high estimate of $650,000, he said.

While such Benin sculptures are highly prized for their elegance and sophistication, the Franklin collection’s “Bangwa Queen” may have even more going for it in the current market. “It is one of the most famous pieces of African art in the world. It’s in every textbook and it has all the pedigrees, but it’s also a great work of art from a great culture,” De Grunne said. Modern art aficionados are likely to recognize the angular figure from a photograph by Surrealist Man Ray who posed a nude model with the “Bangwa Queen” in the ‘30s.

Los Angeles dealer Harry A. Franklin, who died in 1983, bought the celebrated sculpture for about $26,000 at a landmark auction of Helena Rubenstein’s collection in 1966. A male figure, believed by scholars to have been carved as the queen’s partner, will be sold separately. The two figures were originally acquired in the late 1890s by Gustav Conrau, a German merchant explorer and colonial agent who was the first white man to reach the Bangwa kingdoms, but the pair was later split up. After Franklin acquired the queen, he purchased the male figure from another collection and reunited the couple, but the April auction may divorce them again.

The highly publicized Rubenstein auction, predominantly of African art collected in the ‘30s, totalled about $500,000 in sales. “It was an unheard of amount at the time for African art,” De Grunne said. The Franklin auction will be a test of the African art market, which has grown steadily over the past few years. While million-dollar African works are extremely rare, six-figure sales have become quite commonplace, De Grunne said.

“The Franklin collection ranks with the Rubenstein collection in terms of quality. It has enormous breadth and variety of styles, primarily from West Africa. Everything is very well documented and authenticated,” De Grunne said. “This auction isn’t only for a few millionaires who can bid on the star lots. There are very good things for $1,000 and $5,000--the whole spread--so it’s a wonderful opportunity for people who are just starting to collect.”

The collection is particularly strong in art from the country of Cameroon and from the Yoruba, Senufu and Baule tribes. The Franklin Cameroon collection is said to be the finest in private hands. This material has had wide exposure, first in the Smithsonian Institution’s 1984-85 traveling exhibition of Cameroon art from various collections and later in a 1986-89 nationwide show exclusively featuring the Franklin collection.

Harry A. Franklin, who began collecting in 1938 and opened a gallery in Beverly Hills in 1955, bought several pieces in the Rubenstein sale and continued to collect until his death. A pioneering believer in the aesthetic worth of so-called primitive art, he was turned on to the field by artists. Avant-garde artists’ attraction to African art was well established when Franklin plunged into the field. Pablo Picasso, who was among the first to be struck by the art’s raw power, bought African masks in 1907 and introduced similar faces into such celebrated works as his landmark painting, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.”

The greatest African art is sculpture, but even its most venerated examples are sometimes thought to be backward or at least less highly evolved than the great traditions of Western painting and sculpture. African art scholars who dispute this interpretation have studied the field extensively and gained a wide following, often among modern and contemporary art collectors who see parallels between the two traditions.

African art grew from indigenous forms and made its way into Europe and the United States through the spoils of war, colonialists, missionaries, explorers and anthropologists. Franklin was among the few collectors who started early enough to get good pieces, and he followed through with scholarship.

“We have always kept the collection in the public eye,” said his daughter, Valerie Franklin, who joined the family business around 1970 and took over the gallery and collection after his death.

She has decided to sell the African art to pursue a new career as a writer. “I want to have a more contemplative life,” she said, acknowledging that parting with the family collection is a painful process. “If you have spent most of your life guarding something, it’s very difficult to give it up, but I have just been a custodian of the art. It has a life of its own and now it will go out into the world.”

Selections from the Franklin collection will go on an international tour before the New York auction, stopping in London, Paris, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Geneva, Zurich and Los Angeles. The local exhibition is scheduled for Feb. 28 to March 1, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., at Sotheby’s Beverly Hills showroom, 308 N. Rodeo Drive.