Catalogue entry
"[…] Arrivée au Château de 'la Motte' […] Nous allons au nouvel atelier de Philippe. […] – Portrait au pastel du 'Zoulou' avec une énorme Bible/ aux tons d’ivoire, la couleur de l’étoffe sombre lui/ servant de costume, le fond aux gammes de violet/ sourd – figure de grand caractère. […]" (… Arrival at Château La Motte. … We go to Philippe’s new studio … Pastel portrait of the ‘Zulu’ with a huge Bible in ivory tones, the colour of the dark cloth which serves as his costume, the background a range of muted purple - figure with great character. …) (Massé, 10 November 1929, p. [9 & 10])
Moffat Bontyisi Mcanyana (1882? -1948), born and baptized on a reservation of the American Board Mission in South Africa, was a deeply religious man. After his studies at the Adams Mission Station, he set out to find a church possessing true knowledge and able to provide satisfactory answers to his questions, thereby enabling him to deepen his understanding of the word of God. After a brief period in the Catholic Church, he became a member of the Wesleyan Church, which trained him as a preacher for its school of theology, a role that ultimately he never exercised. He was hired in the Randfontein mines, where he met another Zulu worker, Joel Maduna. Maduna, also interested in religious questions, introduced him to the writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg by lending him the first volume of the Arcana Cœlestia. Thanks to Maduna, Mcanyana was able to contact a minister of the General Church of the New Jerusalem (New Church), and thus made contact with Theodore Pitcairn, who worked at the time for the missions of the church and taught theology at the "Durban Society" of Natal. Educated in the doctrines, Mcanyana was ordained a priest of the first order during the thirteenth general assembly of the "New Church", which was held in London in 1928. Beyond his pastoral and missionary tasks in Durban, at Kent Manor, and in the coastal district of the former province of Natal, Mcanyana translated The New Jerusalem and its Celestial Doctrine, as well as a selection of The True Christian Religion by Swedenborg. He compiled an entire liturgy and wrote manuscripts in Zulu to make known to his compatriots the main doctrines of his new church.1
We can suppose that Philippe Smit created this portrait from a photograph because there is no evidence of a meeting between the artist and Moffat Mcanyana during his trip to London. The fact that Theodore Pitcairn kept this pastel in Pleignes in France suggests that he had ordered it for his own collection in memory of the ordination of the young priest, with whom he was certainly very close. It is unlikely that this work was an official commission from the "New Church" especially since the 1924 portraits of the bishops did not earn Philippe Smit a great success.2
1. Source: "Two Letters from a Zulu." New Church Life, 1920, p. 440-442; Elphik, F. W. "Rev Moffat B. Mcanyana." New Church Life, 1948, p. 258-260.
2. See [PS 244] and [PS 246].
