In Ousmane Sembène’s God’s Bits of Wood, the railway running from Dakar into what was then French Sudan becomes the setting for one of the most consequential labour disputes in the history of French West Africa. Published in 1960, the year in which Senegal and Mali achieved independence from France, the novel reconstructs the railway strike of 1947–48, during which African workers demanded the creation of a cadre unique, a single professional structure that would replace the distinction between African and European employees, together with greater equality in wages, benefits and conditions. Moving between Dakar, Thiès and Bamako, Sembène uses the railway to connect communities separated by considerable distances and colonial borders, transforming a dispute between employees and administrators into a broader account of collective action under French rule.
Jacques Majorelle, Portrait of a Man from Kayes Wearing a Fulani Fibre Hat, 1945, gouache and pastel on paper, 59 × 49 cm.
Only two years before the strike, Jacques Majorelle travelled along this railway while undertaking the first of his three journeys through West Africa. Having landed in Dakar on 1 November 1945, he boarded a train for Bamako later that month, travelling through Diourbel, Kaffrine and Tambacounda before reaching Kayes, where he executed the present portrait. Sembène’s novel and Majorelle’s drawing approach the same geography from fundamentally different positions and should not be made to illustrate one another too neatly, however their proximity nevertheless places the portrait within the documented history of a railway that linked the Atlantic port of Dakar with the interior of French West Africa and would, shortly afterwards, become the site of a major confrontation over racial and professional inequality.
Majorelle was already closely associated with North Africa when he undertook the journey. Born in Nancy in 1886, he was the son of Louis Majorelle, the furniture designer and important member of the École de Nancy whose work helped to define French Art Nouveau. Jacques initially studied architecture and decoration at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nancy before moving to Paris in 1903, where he attended the Académie Julian and pursued painting. Following earlier journeys to Egypt, Spain and Italy, he travelled to Morocco in 1917 and established himself in Marrakech, which remained his principal home for much of the rest of his life.
His paintings of Marrakech, the kasbahs of the High Atlas and the landscapes of southern Morocco established his reputation as an Orientalist painter, while his house, studio and botanical garden would eventually make his name familiar far beyond the history of painting. Begun during the 1920s and developed over several decades, the garden incorporated plants gathered from different parts of the world, while the studio designed by Paul Sinoir in the early 1930s was subsequently painted in the intense ultramarine now known as “Majorelle blue”. The fame of the Jardin Majorelle has since become central to the artist’s public reputation, although painting remained his principal professional activity and led him far beyond Marrakech.
The journey of 1945 marked the beginning of a new geographical phase in Majorelle’s career. He travelled first to French Sudan, a colonial territory corresponding substantially to present-day Mali, before visiting Guinea in 1947 and Ivory Coast in 1952; during the final journey, he also spent time in Senegal, Guinea and French Sudan. Kayes, Bamako and Bougouni were among the principal places in which he worked during the first expedition, producing portraits, markets and scenes of communal life in gouache and pastel. These works extended his long-standing interest in African subjects into regions with histories and cultural traditions distinct from those he had encountered during nearly three decades in Morocco.
Majorelle left Agadir in a military aircraft accompanied by his daughter Jika, travelling through Mauritania before landing in Dakar. Jika returned to Marrakech after approximately two weeks because of growing political tensions, while Majorelle continued alone by train towards Bamako. The route followed one of the principal pieces of colonial infrastructure in French West Africa: the eastern section of the railway, connecting Kayes with Bamako and Koulikoro on the Niger River, was completed in 1904, while the line running westwards from Kayes towards Thiès and Dakar opened in 1924, creating a continuous rail connection between the Niger and the Atlantic coast.
Kayes had already played a significant part in the establishment of French rule in the region. Situated on the Senegal River, it became the capital of French Sudan during the territory’s first period under that name in the 1890s, before the administrative centre was transferred to Bamako in the early twentieth century. By the time Majorelle arrived in 1945, the town remained an important point on the route between Dakar and Bamako, connecting river and railway transport near the western boundary of French Sudan.
The inscription at the lower right of the present work, “Kayes 45 / J. Majorelle”, situates the portrait securely within this first journey. Although the sitter’s identity has not been recorded, his distinctive fibre hat associates his dress with Fulani traditions found across West Africa and the Sahel. Majorelle’s attention is directed not towards the activity of a market or communal gathering, as in many works produced during his travels, but towards the presence of a single individual, whose assured bearing and direct gaze give the portrait an immediacy unusual within the artist’s larger West African compositions.
This concentration upon an individual sitter also distinguishes the drawing from the stylised female figures with which Majorelle’s African work is frequently associated. The flowing robe, beaded necklace and elaborate hat provide the principal elements of the composition, but they are subordinated to the modelling of the face, where carefully graded passages of pastel articulate the brow, cheekbones and nose. The scale of the sheet, measuring 59 by 49 centimetres, allows the figure to assume a commanding presence, while the combination of gouache and pastel gives Majorelle both the opacity of painted colour and the directness of drawing.
The portrait belongs to a period in which Majorelle’s palette and technique were adapting to the subjects encountered during his West African journeys. Gouache and pastel on toned paper allowed him to combine areas of saturated colour with passages of more restrained modelling, retaining the chromatic intensity for which his Moroccan work had become known while developing a more concentrated approach to portraiture. The fibre hat, animated by ochre, rust and dark blue, supplies the work’s most pronounced colour accents, while the close framing maintains attention upon the sitter himself.
The date of the portrait places it at the beginning of a period of profound political change. The Dakar–Niger railway strike began in October 1947 and continued into 1948, mobilising railway employees and the communities upon which they depended across French West Africa. French Sudan became the autonomous Sudanese Republic within the French Community in 1958 and subsequently joined Senegal in the Mali Federation, which became independent in June 1960; following the dissolution of that federation, the Republic of Mali proclaimed its independence in September of the same year. The portrait therefore predates the strike by two years and Malian independence by fifteen, preserving Majorelle’s encounter with Kayes at a decisive moment in the modern history of the region.
The present work is accompanied by a certificate from the Comité Jacques Majorelle. Its dated and located inscription establishes its place within the artist’s first West African journey, connecting it to the route that carried him from Dakar towards Bamako and to the wider group of works produced in Kayes, Bamako and Bougouni during 1945. Combining the geographical specificity of a travel drawing with the scale and concentration of an independent portrait, it records Majorelle’s close attention to a single sitter while occupying an important place within the expansion of his practice beyond the Moroccan subjects upon which his reputation had first been established.
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