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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled
Theme and Variation in Two Twentieth-Century
Ethiopian Traditional Paintings

presented by
Andrea Catherine Bour Plant

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
of the requirements for

M.A. degree in HiStOEY Of Art

 

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Major professor

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Michigan State
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THEME AND VARIATION IN TWO TWENTIETH-CENTURY
ETHIOPIAN TRADITIONAL PAINTINGS

By

Andrea Catherine Bour Plant

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Art

2000

ABSTRACT

THEME AND VARIATION IN TWO TWENTIETH-CENTURY
ETHIOPIAN TRADITIONAL PAINTINGS

By

Andrea Bour Plant

This thesis presents a preliminary examination of the lives of two twentieth-
century traditional painters, Qengeta Jembere Hailu and Marcos Jembere, and their
representations of the popular theme, Emperor Tewodros and the Battle of Maqdela.
Interviews with the artists and the analysis of a number of paintings depicting this subject
are used to identify the stylistic and iconographic differences between the paintings.
Consistencies and variations are discussed in terms of their relationship to the artist’s
training and individual life experiences, and ultimately how they might reﬂect the history

of the genre, its patrons, and Ethiopia.

To
my mom

Catherine Bour

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to extend my sincere gratitude and appreciation for
the unwavering support, patience, and guidance of my advisor,
Raymond Silverman.

His profound respect for and commitment
to the people and traditions of Africa

are a continual source of inspiration.

Sincere thanks to Harold Marcus and Linda Stanford

for reading this paper and offering so many useful comments.

I remain extremely thankful to Tibebe Eshete

for his guidance and friendship.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ...................................................................................................... vi
Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1

Interpretations of the Twentieth—Century Traditional Painting ........................... 4
Chapter 2

Jembere Hailu and Marcos Jembere .................................................................. 16
Chapter 3

Emperor Tewodros H (1820-1868) .................................................................... 22
Chapter 4

Two Twentieth-Century Traditional Paintings: A Formal Analysis ................ 37
Chapter 5

Further Considerations: Iconography & Inscriptions ........................................ 52
Conclusion

Life & Art: Theme & Variation ......................................................................... 66
References .......................................................................................................... 73

LIST OF FIGURES

Qangeta Jembere Hailu

Emperor Tewodros' Law Court and The Battle of Maqdela, ca. 1986

Oil on cotton. 83 cm x 118 cm

Museum fiir V61kerkunde der Universitat Zurich (20032)

Reprinted courtesy of the Museum fiir Volkerkunde der Universitat Ztirich.

Marcos Jembere

The Judgment of Emperor Tewodros, 1993

Michigan State University Museum (7557.14)

Reprinted courtesy of the Michigan State University Museum.

Bahaylu Gabra Maryam

Bataille de Magdala, ca. 1926
Ethnologische Museum Geneva (no number)
Reprinted from Eugene Pittard, Archives suisses d'AnthropoIogie géne’rale, pl. 8.

Artist unknown

The Battle of Adwa, ca. 1909

Smithsonian Institution (51876)

Reprinted from Richard Pankhurst “Some Notes for a History of Ethiopian
Secular Art,” p. 38.

Balatschaw Yimer

The Battle of Maqdala, ca. 1930

Museum fur Velkerkunde der Universitat Ziirich (12207)

Reprinted from Girma Fisseha and Walter Raunig, Mensch und Geschichte in
Athiopiens Volksmalerei, pl. 33.

Artist unknown

The Battle of Magdala, ca. 1935

Collection of Geoffrey Harmsworth

Reprinted from Geoffrey Harmsworth, Abyssinian Adventure, facing p. 246.

Artist unknown

The Tribunal of Emperor Tewodros II 1855-1868, ca. 1930

Canvas. 73 cm x 104 cm

Museum fiir Volkerkunde der Universitat Ziirich (16841)

Reprinted from Girma Fisseha and Walter Rauni g, Mensch und Geschichte in
Athiopiens Volksmalerei, pl. 50.

vi

10.

11.

Artist unknown

The Suicide of Emperor Tewodros (1855-1868), before 1966

Parchment. 25 cm x 33 cm

Collection of Dr. Wolfgang Till

Reprinted from Girma Fisseha and Walter Rauni g, Mensch und Geschichte in
Athiopiens Volksmalerei, pl. 25.

Berhanu Yimenu

Battle of Maqdala, ca. 1990

Michigan State University Museum (7359.6)

Reprinted courtesy of the Michigan State University Museum.

Artist Unknown

The Judgement of Emperor Tewodros, ca.

Michigan State University Museum (L202.11)

Reprinted courtesy of the Michigan State University Museum.

Artist Unknown

The Tribunal of Emperor Tewodros

Institute of Ethiopian Studies Museum

Reprinted from Kasa and Kasa: Papers on the Lives, Times, and Images of

Tewodros II and Yohannes IV (1855-1889), p. 186.

vii

INTRODUCTION

In the years of 1993 and 1994, while completing my graduate studies in art
history at Michigan State University, I had the opportunity to work on the exhibition,
Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity as a graduate assistant. As the assistant to the chief
curator of the exhibition, Raymond Silverrnan, one of my responsibilities was to work
with other graduate students in cataloging a collection of twentieth-century Ethiopian
paintings that had been recently acquired by field researchers for the Michigan State
University Museum. Because the majority of these paintings included inscriptions written
in the Amharic and Ge’ez languages, I worked very closely with two Ethiopian graduate
students, Tibebe Eshete and Shiferaw Assefa, who provided the essential skill of
translating into English the text featured within these paintings.

Quite often throughout the cataloging process, Tibebe, Shiferaw, and I found our
way into discussions about the paintings, their inscriptions, and how they related to the
images. Questions regarding the iconography of many of the individual paintings
developed into lengthy conversations about the people, history, and art of Ethiopia.

Many of the paintings to be cataloged depicted historical themes featuring
signiﬁcant events in the history of Ethiopia, such as the Battle of Adwa (1896) or the
Battle of Maqdela (1868). In discussing these themes with Ethiopian students and
historians, I became particularly interested in those which represented the Battle of
Maqdela and the Emperor Tewodros II, the emperor of Ethiopia at the time of the battle.

Regardless of the approximate date assigned to the paintings we were to catalog,

certain iconographic features that identiﬁed Tewodros and Maqdela could be seen. I
became ever more curious as to whether or not a similar consistency could be seen in the
stylistic treatment among the paintings as well. And, if innovations in the iconographic or
stylistic treatment of these images could be found, what was the source for these
changes? If these paintings were produced primarily for foreign patrons, were there any
iconographic or stylistic changes in the popular historical or political painting themes that
reﬂected the social or political environment at the time in which they were painted?
Could the study of the consistencies or subtle inconsistencies somehow reﬂect the
attitudes regarding the leadership in Ethiopia at the time the paintings were
commissioned? Or, could such nuances offer a better understanding of the individual
Ethiopian artist’s life and experiences?

Painters Jembere Hailu and his son, Marcos Jembere, were two of the eleven
individual artists whose work was featured in the Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity
exhibit. As with each of the eleven artists featured in the exhibition, ﬁeld researchers
conducted interviews with both Jembere and Marcos concerning their life and work. The
interviews with the father and son highlighted the differences in their artistic training and
life experiences. I also considered whether their paintings would reﬂect such differences.

Throughout this paper, I use the interviews with Jembere and Marcos and their
two paintings of Tewodros and the Battle of Maqdela to examine how the stylistic and
iconographic inconsistencies that surface reﬂect the differences in both artists’ training
and life experiences. I hope to also demonstrate that despite a market which continues to
be driven predominantly by tourists and the use of familiar themes (“popular” themes

such as Tewodros and Maqdela, the Battle of Adwa, the legend of the Queen of Sheba

and Solomon, etc.), twentieth—century Ethiopian traditional painting is not a static,
unchanging degenerate offshoot of Ethiopian religious painting, but a distinct genre that
merits full consideration.

Currently, scholarship that examines the history of twentieth-century Ethiopian
painting is limited. The ﬁrst chapter of this paper provides a brief overview of the studies
that have been published over the last ﬁfty years that deal with traditional twentieth-
century Ethiopian painting. The individual life histories of the two painters, Jembere
Hailu and Marcos Jembere, are detailed in the following chapter, concentrating primarily
upon their artistic training and those events that they suggested were important in their
lives. Chapter three discusses events in the life and reign of Emperor Tewodros II that are
most frequently found in so many of the twentieth-century traditional Ethiopian paintings
illustrating his life. Examined in lesser detail are events from his life that appear less
frequently.

How do the various subjects and compositional features found in the two
paintings by Jembere and Marcos remain consistent with or deviate from similar features
found in a number of other twentieth-century traditional paintings that depict the same
theme? Chapters four and ﬁve investigate this question by comparing the similarities and
variations in the style, subject matter, and inscriptions in both.

In conclusion, I draw upon observations from the stylistic and iconographic
analyses of chapters four and ﬁve to demonstrate the importance of the individual painter
and how his/her training and the context in which s/he paints lead to changes in the

artistic interpretation of conventional themes of twentieth-century Ethiopian painting.

CHAPTER 1

INTERPRETATIONS OF THE
TWENTIETH-CENTURY TRADITIONAL PAINTING

Until recently, an historical studies of Ethiopian painting have focused primarily
on the traditions of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, such as illuminated manuscripts,
icons, and mural paintings of the past. The study of the origins, artists, and themes of
twentieth-century traditional Ethiopian artists have not received the same kind of
attention. Although a discussion of the reasons why such biases exist goes beyond the
scope of this paper, it is important to note that since the 19303, the increasing popularity
and production of twentieth-century traditional painting has prompted some scholars to
perceive the tradition as a “mass-produced” or “commercial” deviant of “the great
achievement of the past” (Chojnacki 1964, l 1). Considering the fact that many of the
paintings produced in Ethiopia today reveal stylistic and iconographic attributes
associated with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and in part, continue to be commissioned
for religious environments, this bias is even more puzzling. Fortunately, a number of
scholars in the last half of this century have begun to examine twentieth-century
traditional painting in a different manner.

Scholarly contributions to the study of twentieth-century traditional painting and
the different approaches to examining traditional painting in the twentieth-century will be
reviewed in this chapter. How these studies have furthered the identiﬁcation of twentieth-

century traditional painting as a distinct aesthetic expression also will be discussed.

Prior to the late 19605, references to twentieth-century traditional Ethiopian
painting were primarily descriptive. Of the many travelers who journeyed to Ethiopia at
the turn of the century and returned to their homes to publish accounts of their travels,
few offered much more than general impressions of, or personal preferences for,
Ethiopian painting.

One of the ﬁrst scholarly articles that examined socio-cultural aspects of
traditional painting in the twentieth-century was written by Eugene Pittard in 1928. Swiss
engineer W. E. M. Molly had collected a number of twentieth-century traditional
Ethiopian paintings in the 19205, and in 1928, the Musée d’Ethnographie Geneve
presented an exhibition of these paintings. Pittard used information about the paintings as
it was communicated by Molly, and then provided brief, introductory anthropological
analyses of the paintings. Although earlier writers had identiﬁed traditional painting as a
distinctive style of painting in their writings and discussed the challenges of purchasing
or commissioning such works, Pittard’s article was important because it was the ﬁrst to
provide a worthwhile study of eight paintings that were created by a single artist, Behailu
Gabre Mariam.

The rise in popularity of traditional Ethiopian painting after the coronation of
Haile Selassie (1930) had a marked effect on the nature of the scholarship of the period.l
An increased foreign presence in Addis Ababa brought an increase in visitors writing
about their experiences in the city. Literature from the period featured observations on the

popular themes of traditional paintings being produced in Addis Ababa, as well as the

 

1 It was not until the diplomatic recognition of Ethiopia by foreign communities after the defeat of the
Italians at Adwa in 1896. and the resulting increase in a foreign presence in Addis Ababa that a signiﬁcant
market for traditional paintings developed. Foreigners visiting or living in Addis Ababa created an

names of a number of the more popular painters of the period.

Contemporary writings from this period, such as Mérab’s Impressions d 'Ethiopie
(1921-1929), Zervos’ L’empire d ’Ethiopie (1936), and Coon’s Measuring Ethiopia and
Flight into Arabia (1936), provided valuable observations on painting in Addis Ababa.
Unlike some of the other works that offered general observations on the styles or themes
of the period (Norden 1933), these authors identiﬁed speciﬁc themes and compositions
that appeared more frequently and identiﬁed the popularity of certain religious saints,
historical characters, and popular allegories. Zervos and Mérab both presented
biographical information regarding individual artists who lived and worked in Addis
Ababa at the time, including (when available) their names, where they had previously
lived or worked, and brief references to the location of some of their works. Perhaps the
interest of these writers in documenting traditional painting of the time was due to a rise
in the popularity of collecting such paintings, but the historical insight offered in the
writings of Mérab and Zervos is signiﬁcant. Not until the 19803 would contemporary
writings on twentieth-century traditional painting reveal such interest in the lives of living
artists.

Scholars had yet to examine twentieth-century traditional painting from a
historical perspective until 1966 when Pankhurst published “Some Notes for a History of
Ethiopian Secular Art.” An ambitious attempt to construct a history of secular painting in
Ethiopia, this essay presented an extensive survey of travelers’ accounts, royal chronicles,

Ethiopian manuscripts, and mural paintings (dating back to as early as the eighteenth

 

increased demand for traditional paintings. The simultaneous advent of photography among Ethiopia’s
ruling elite also created a new demand for painted portraits at the time.

century) which featured or described speciﬁcally secular subjects.2 Pankhurst introduced
a historical framework for the development of twentieth-century painting in Ethiopia by
examining the important cultural and historical factors (such as the increase in consumers
of such paintings in Addis Ababa or the introduction and acceptance of photography by
the ruling elite) that gave rise to the development in the late-nineteenth and early-
twentieth centuries of secular themes and painters. Establishing a historical tie from the
contemporary secular artist to those individual court artists and painters from the
nineteenth century, Pankhurst formally connected twentieth-century secular painting to
what Chojnacki (1964, 11) referred to as “the great achievements of the past.” In doing
so, Pankhurst challenged scholars to view “secular” or twentieth-century traditional
painting as they had nineteenth century Ethiopian painting — as an expression of the
historical, social, and cultural environment in which it was produced.

Scholarship in the following decades dealt more with the examination of popular
themes and the interpretation of iconographic elements and less with the historical
questions that had been presented by Pankhurst in 1966. The 1985 exhibition, Mensch
und Geschichte in Athiopiens Volksmalerei, was the ﬁrst to focus strictly upon traditional
paintings from the twentieth-century.3 The accompanying catalog, written by Walter
Raunig and Girma Fisseha (1985), documented an extensive grouping of various
collections of traditional paintings, organized key information on the popularity of certain

topics, such as artists and artistic centers, and identiﬁed various stylistic characteristics.

 

2 Reﬂecting the problems of “classifying" a distinct type of painting that had not been adequately examined
by scholars, Pankhurst introduced the term “secular” to distinguish traditional paintings of the twentieth-
century from their nineteenth century (commissioned primarily for religious environments) precedents. I-lis
use of “secular” and the author’s use of “twentieth-century traditional" direct the reader to the same form of
painting.

Although many of the catalogue entries were basically descriptions of the paintings,
Girma and Raunig’s work is nevertheless a very important one. It provided scholars with
a long-overdue introduction to the wealth of information featured in twentieth-century
traditional paintings. Most of this information still remains largely unused.

In 1985, Heinrich Scholler and Girma Fisseha co-authored a preliminary
examination of a number of twentieth-century traditional paintings that represented the
popular theme of open-air courts. Rather than providing a t0pical description of the
iconography of the painting or detail its subject matter, the authors went one step further
and supplemented their iconographic study with introductory cultural-historical

interpretations:

The depiction of Ethiopian courts in popular paintings is the expression of
a distinct Ethiopian feeling for law and order, which has its roots in the
people. Possibly one can regard the court scenes as an expression of an
Ethiopian ‘Volksgeist’ from which the traditional law emanates, a law
which cannot be ‘made’ but, . . . ‘is and comes to be with the people.’
Herein lies, in addition to its artistic importance, the legal-anthropological
value of this art form (Scholler and Girma 1985, 161).
Attempting to assign deeper meaning to the iconography of just one of the many popular
traditional painting themes (open-air court scenes), this article was instrumental in
shifting inquiries away from those of the collector to those of the scholar.4
The trend in scholarship to examine popular themes of twentieth-century

traditional painting continued in 1986 at the First International Conference on the History

of Ethiopian Art where new questions regarding the life history of the twentieth-century

 

3 As mentioned earlier, Pittard (1928; 1947) had previously written about traditional paintings appearing in
an exhibition, but this exhibition featured over one hundred and twenty traditional paintings.
4 This interpretation was of an introductory nature and, as the authors stated, would “have to be supported

by the examination of speciﬁc contemporary documents and travelers’ reports” (Scholler and Girma 1985,
161).

traditional painter were introduced.

At the conference, both Girma Fisseha and Pankhurst presented historical
analyses of a number of thematically related paintings. Girma Fisseha offered
introductory considerations on the relevance of hunting scenes in traditional painting.
Pankhurst (1989) built upon the ideas explored in Scholler and Girma’s examination
(1985) of open~air court themes with the paper, “The Battle of Adwa (1896) as Depicted
By Traditional Ethiopian Artists.” Comparing the iconographic elements of a broad
collection of paintings that depicted the famous Battle of Adwa, Pankhurst constructed a
chronology for development and changes that he observed various painters’
representations of the Adwa theme over the previous three-quarters of this century. This
marked the ﬁrst time that a scholar’had presented a comprehensive historical analysis of a
twentieth-century iconographic theme.

A new regard for the traditional painter as individual artist was presented at the
conference by Girma Kidane (1989) in his paper, “Four Traditional Ethiopian Painters
and Their Life Histories.” Providing brief biographies and individual photographs of
four established traditional painters, Girma confronted long-held biases concerning the
anonymity of twentieth-century traditional painters. As Pankhurst (1966) had
underscored the importance of determining the individual identity of artists and how their
background and artistic training reﬂect the history of twentieth-century painting, Girma’s
attention to the details of each of the four artists’ personal lives emphasized how
important they are in the study of their paintings. The differences in the lives of the four
artists Girma discussed suggested further examination into the differences or similarities

of their paintings.

Raunig also presented a short paper at the 1986 conference. In a brief summary,
he discussed the future of twentieth-century traditional painting and its artists. Most
importantly, “Ethiopian Folk Art Painting” recognized that “comprehensive stylistic
research into Ethiopian folk art painting has still to be carried out” (1986, 70). And
although his paper did not speciﬁcally address issues of classiﬁcation, Raunig did
indirectly introduce the use of yet another term, “Folk art,” for those paintings produced
in Ethiopia throughout the twentieth—century for primarily non-religious environments.5

In 1988, at the Tenth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Richard
Pankhurst (1994) explored the popularity of yet another traditional theme, the
representation of Emperor Tewodros and the Battle of Maqdela. Presenting a brief
overview of the six most popular themes used to illustrate the life and reign of Tewodros,
Pankhurst provided valuable information regarding the iconographic elements featured in
these themes. This work remains the only examination of the Tewodros theme in the
visual arts of Ethiopia.

It was not until Ricci’s Pittura Ethiopica Tradizionale (1989) that stylistic
considerations of twentieth-century traditional painting were integrated with historical
study. His catalog of the largely unpublished collection of traditional Ethiopian paintings
in the Istituto Italo-Africano in Rome, included translations of inscriptions found in
several of the ninety-three paintings and various observations concerning history, style
and iconography. Ricci’s study, in contrast to earlier works, explored the distinctive or
unique characteristics of each painting, such as its execution, organization, and
iconography. His examination also included the study of inscriptions, as well as historical

facts associated with each of the paintings. In doing so, he was able to pose questions and

 

5 Elizabeth Biasio (1993) later explored, in depth, the various terms used to classify this type of painting.

10

offer comments about their origins, inﬂuences, and authorship. Despite the introductory
nature of his study, Ricci directed scholarship beyond standard historical inquiries, such
as that of Pankhurst (1966), toward a more comprehensive, art historical methodology.
However, Ricci’s use of the term “contaminated” to identify those twentieth—century
traditional paintings that exhibited European inﬂuences perpetuated the bias of Ethiopian
painting as timeless or stylistically static until the advent of European inﬂuence - an
inﬂuence that invariably led to its “degeneration.” The connotations associated with such
terminology did little to complement the advances Ricci had made in presenting
twentieth-century traditional painting from an art historical point of view.

Scholarly biases toward the “great achievements of the past” (Chojnacki 1964,
11) continue to be seen in some of the papers presented at the Second International
Conference on the History of Ethiopian Art held in 1990 in Warsaw. One such example is
seen in Chojnacki and Paul Henze’s introductory comments to the published proceedings
of the conference. Discussing Ethiopian painting, they state that (1993, 13) “although
such paintings were produced to satisfy the demands of diplomats and visitors to the
country, some are worthy of recognition as genuine works of art,” and reveal the common
positive biases toward earlier forms of painting.

Girma Moges’ paper, “African Characteristics in Traditional Ethiopian Art,
presented at the Second International Conference on the History of Ethiopian Art, did not
support such a bias. Presumably weary of Western scholars referring to traditional
paintings as part of a “contaminated” genre or one in which European inﬂuence is
prevalent, Moges explored those African inﬂuences that could be discovered within

traditional paintings. However, his paper proved methodologically problematic because it

11

presented a number of stylistic attributes associated with various African sources or
inﬂuences without providing a sound basis for such observations. It did, however,
provide another important contribution to the construction of an accurate and
comprehensive history of twentieth-century traditional painting in Ethiopia — that
concerning the African inﬂuence.

Questions explored by Elisabeth Biasio in the paper, “Twentieth-century
Ethiopian Paintings in Traditional Style: ‘Traditional,’ ‘folk,’ or ‘popular’ art?,” at the
Third International Conference of the History of Ethiopian Art held in Addis Ababa in
1993, addressed semantic issues. She focused on a set of issues currently facing scholars
studying the history of twentieth-century Ethiopian paintings. Problems such as the
terminology used in the discussion of twentieth-century Ethiopian paintings or the
classiﬁcation of such works. Her analysis identiﬁes the numerous challenges paintings
that manifest so many origins, inﬂuences and transformations pose for the Western
trained scholar. What surfaced in Biasio’s inquiries were scholars’ apparent disregard for
the single artist’s perspective of twentieth-century Ethiopian painting. Persistent
questions of terminology, classiﬁcations and stylistic developments could, perhaps, be
more adequately addressed given detailed accounts from individual artists regarding such
issues. Except for Girma (1989) and Girma and Silverman (1994), Silverman and Girma
(1999), and Silverman (1999) few scholars have examined the life histories of Ethiopian
painters. Ultimately, without such information, few comparative studies or
comprehensive histories may be written regarding Ethiopian painting of the twentieth-
century.

The importance of the artist in the history of Ethiopian traditional painting was

12

demonstrated in the publication of individual artists’ proﬁles for the exhibition, Ethiopia:
Traditions of Creativity, authored by curator Raymond Silverman (1994). Qes Adamu
Tesfaw and Qengeta Jembere Hailu were two of the eleven featured artists trained in the
religious style featured in the exhibition.6 Rather than reiterate the introductory
scholarship of the last twenty years on traditional painting, Silverman focused on the
lives of Adamu and Jembere as they were communicated by each artist in ﬁeld interviews
that he and colleagues Girma Fisseha and Neal Sobania conducted in April, May and
June of 1993.

If Biasio’s paper of 1993 had raised questions regarding the theoretical distinction
between “traditional,” “folk” and “popular art” or treating Ethiopian painting as a
generalized, monolithic entity, Silverrnan’s presentation of the actual lives of twentieth-
century painters underscored the misapplication of Western styled categories and terms.
The histories of Adamu and Jembere have certain afﬁnities, such as the similarity in the
religious environment in which both were artistically educated and the fact that both had
made painting their profession. However, their life experiences are quite diverse and this
is signiﬁcantly reﬂected in their painting style - thereby stressing the need for speciﬁc
research focused on individual traditional painters who are alive, regardless of their
conformity or non-conformity to categories such as “secular” or “sacred” painters.

In 1994, Girma Fisseha and Raymond Silverman presented the paper “Two
Generations of Traditional Painters: A Biographical Sketch of Qangeta Jembere Hailu
and Marcos Jembere,” at the 12th lntemational Conference of Ethiopian Studies. Using
the painters’ autobiographies as the point of focus, Girma and Silverman reinforced the

approach mentioned above and offered a new approach to the study of twentieth-century

 

6 Qes and Qengeta are terms that refer to religious ofﬁces within the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

13

Ethiopian painting. As in the exhibition, Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity, in which the
stylistic differences of traditional painters challenged longstanding views of repetition
and mass production, the lives of father Jembere and son Marcos proved to contradict
notions of decline or “contamination” (in traditional painting) as a consequence of
diminished “spirituality” or an afﬁnity with religious painting. Moreover, this
investigation of the work of two painters, in this instance, Jembere and Marcos, perhaps
serves as the best example to date of the consistencies and variations that exist within the
form and style of twentieth-century traditional painting in Ethiopia.

The essay, “Jembere and His Son Marcos: Traditional Painting at the End of the
Twentieth Century,” featured in the book, Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity (1999),
again examined the well-documented works of traditional painters Marcos Jembere and
Jembere Hailu. In this essay, however, Silverman and Girma place the work of each
painter in the broader context of twentieth-century painting in Ethiopia and identify a
number of neglected topics relevant to the study of traditional painting, such as
portraiture and religious painting.

Silverman and Girma use different works of Jembere and Marcos to demonstrate
that traditional artists frequently work in more than one idiom. In so doing, they
challenge aspects of previous scholarship and present a new direction for future studies.
Starting, rather than concluding, with the works of each painter, traditional painting is
examined on its own terms. By focusing ﬁrst on the individual artist, their life history,
and the stylistic consistencies or inconsistencies of their collective works, instead of the
general or less speciﬁc commonalties of theme and style, one can begin to build a

historical context for the tradition. This paper draws upon the methodological approach

14

presented in the essay, “Jembere and His Son Marcos: Traditional Painting at the End of
the Twentieth Century,” (1999) by ﬁrst exploring the life histories of Jembere and
Marcos. This is followed by the close analysis of two paintings representing the same
subject produced by each of the artists as a vehicle for exploring some of the factors that
have inﬂuenced the evolution of their work, as well as the work of other traditional

artists.

15

CHAPTER 2

JEMBERE HAILU AND MARCOS JEMBERE

This chapter presents concise life histories of two artists who are the focus of this
paper, Jembere Hailu and Marcos Jembere (Silverman and Girma 1999; Girma and
Silverman 1994). I will review their artistic training and events they consider to be
important in their lives. This biographical information will be used in developing the
stylistic and iconographic comparisons presented in later chapters.

Marcos Jembere is a second generation traditional painter. At thirty-eight years
old, his artistic training and life experiences contrast those of his father’s, Jembere Hailu
(1913 - 1993). Unlike his father and many of the other painters who moved to Addis
Ababa during the ﬁrst half of this century, Marcos did not receive painting training as
part of a traditional church education, nor did he teach himself. He was instructed by his
church-educated father, Jembere. At the age of four he began to learn drawing and
painting at his father’s side. As he matured, his father provided instruction on the
fundamental technical aspects of traditional painting, such as the mixing of colors, the
stretching of canvas, how to sketch the outline of the composition directly on the cloth
canvas with pencil or charcoal, and how to apply different pigments, one layer at a time.
Marcos also learned to work on several different paintings at the same time, applying one
layer of pigment to one painting and, while waiting for it to dry, treating a separate

painting with its own layer of pigment. By observing his father at work and copying his

16

paintings, Marcos was also taught more advanced aspects of painting, such as how to
make paintings “proportional,” which subjects are the most prevalent in traditional
painting, and how to identify signiﬁcant ﬁgures in paintings with captions or labels.7
Once Marcos acquired the necessary skills to work with his father, he assumed an
apprenticeship-styled working arrangement with Jembere, ﬁrst preparing certain aspects
of the paintings for his father to complete, then eventually working on his own paintings
for market. Ultimately, as he has stated, Marcos developed his own form of painting
traditional themes but one stylistically similar to that of his father.8

Marcos received additional painting instruction in the art classes he attended in
both primary and secondary school. In school, Marcos learned what he has termed
“modern arts, such as using straight lines and correct proportions.”9 Art instructors
recognized his exceptional talent and strongly encouraged Marcos to further his
education at a school of ﬁne arts. Marcos subsequently sought his father’s authorization
to leave Ethiopia and pursue his dream of attending a foreign arts school abroad. His
father’s refusal to support his ambitions forced Marcos to remain in Ethiopia and as a
result, he has yet to attend art school. This incident put a strain on the relationship
between father and son. Nevertheless, Marcos continued to paint during this period. Since
1971, he has worked full-time as a civil servant. He still maintains the hope of someday
attending art school.

Today, Marcos works as a supervisor in a government motor pool. He cites his

 

7 Marcos Jembere, interview by Girma Fisseha and Raymond Silverman, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, April 25,
1993.

8 Marcos Jembere, interview by Girma Fisseha and Raymond Silverman, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, April 25,
1993.

9 Marcos Jembere, interview by Girma Fisseha and Raymond Silverman, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, April 25,
1993.

17

job and the period of the Derg, or the provisional military council which ruled Ethiopia
from 1974 to 1991, as having seriously effected his interest and motivation to paint.'0
Marcos has resumed painting and has even attempted to sell his paintings through various
art and curio stores in Addis Ababa over the past several years.

Jembere Hailu was born in a small town near Debra Tabor in 1913.ll Jembere
completed the ﬁrst stage of his traditional church education at the age of eleven. As he
learned to read and write by studying the Dawit (Psalms of David) and different aspects
of zema (religious music), Jembere continued his education by attending qine (spiritual
poetry) school, ﬁrst at the monastery of Hega Vashra in Gojjam and then at Welda. The
ﬁnal years of Jembere’s church education were spent in Samada and Kidane Mehret in
Gaynt, where his studies were devoted to zemmare (reﬁned and complex types of
religious music) and the school of aquaqua (the mastery of the drum and sistra and the
“so—called dance of the priests”). Jembere’s painting instruction began at the church of
Tegbabe Mariam in Amhara Sayent. There, while studying the Old and New Testaments,
he observed his uncle, Aleqa Alemu, as he painted. A well recognized artist, Alemu
instructed Jembere in the essential components of church painting, such as the art of
writing or calligraphy employed to label signiﬁcant ﬁgures in paintings, and various
canons of the church painting tradition. As communicated by Jembere, these canons
(which to date have yet to be thoroughly documented by scholars) included standards for
the depiction of prominent holy ﬁgures, such as the depiction of St. George on a white

horse and the depiction of St. Mercurius on a black horse, or the rendering of the

 

'0 The market for traditional paintings has always been reliant upon foreign patronage in the capital.
During the period of the Derg, there was a dramatic drop in tourism in Ethiopia, and thus a poor market for
traditional painting.

18

Madonna as wearing a “heavenly” blue cape. Additional aspects included the
compositional arrangement of saints, such as that of St. Michael to the right of Mary, for
her protection, and St. George to her left. The representation of ﬁgures, such as rendering
non-believers in proﬁle with one eye and believers frontally with both eyes, appears to
have been equally as important as the assignment of particular colors for certain ﬁgures,
such as the dark-colored devil, and the angels who are represented using light colors.

Jembere began painting for his uncle in 1929 at the church of Enatitu Mariam in
Debra Tabor. Alemu, Jembere and three other painters worked together on the church
which was commissioned by the governor, Ras Gugsa Welle of Begemdir. However, a
1930 rebellion staged by Ras Gugsa against Ras Tefari Mekonnen, the future Haile
Selassie I, halted completion of the project and Jembere returned to his parents’ home.

J embere’s ﬁrst independent commission came in 1931 when the Dejazmach
Wendwossen Kasa, the new leader of Begemdir, requested Jembere to paint the reception
hall of his palace. Jembere received an ofﬁcial position as Secretary to the Dejazmach in
appreciation for his work. His increasing prominence as a painter however, was short
lived, for in 1936 he was forced to stop painting as a result of the Italian invasion of
Ethiopia. Serving in the army of Wendwossen Kasa (who was killed in 1937), Jembere
endured tremendous personal losses — his father was killed at the Battle of Maychew in
1936 and the death of his uncle Aleqa Alemu in 1939 proved to be even more
devastating. Nevertheless, Jembere continued his service ﬁrst under the Fitawrari
Yalegal, who, with the aid of the British army, defeated the Italian General Nasi in 1941.

The years following the restoration of Ethiopian independence were marked with

 

H The following account of Jembere’s life draws upon the essays published by Girma and Silverman in
1994 and Silverman and Girma in 1999.

19

personal difﬁculties for Jembere. Despite his outstanding service to Ethiopia, Jembere
was not immediately recognized, due to problems he encountered with the law. Jembere’s
most recent comments regarding these problems attribute to his alleged involvement in
the 1946 Eritrean independence Muslim league, Rabita al-Islamia, as the cause of his two
year incarceration during this time. He claimed that he was released from prison
following an investigation of his presumed involvement. In an earlier account, Jembere
indicated that the problem stemmed from his accidentally killing a man following an
argument and his subsequent evasion as the source of his problems during this period.
During this time he supposedly assumed the life of a shifta (a bandit or renegade) and
sought sanctuary at the monastery church in Gheghera in Wello, where he was afforded
asylum by the priest Member Sefu. (This report appears to ﬁt more logically into
subsequent accounts of Jembere’s life.) In appreciation for his protection, Jembere
offered to paint the monastery church in Gheghera. Unfortunately, due to sanctions
associated with his having divorced his ﬁrst wife at this time, he was only permitted to
paint the exterior parts of the church, rather than the Sanctuary area.

Jembere moved to Addis Ababa in 1948, and upon appeal to the Emperor Haile
Selassie I for recognition of his service to the Ethiopian cause during the Italian
occupation, Jembere was rewarded with land in the Arat Kilo district of Addis Ababa, as
well as ﬁnancial support for the construction of a house. Jembere states it was at this time
that he was introduced to the acclaimed traditional painter, Belatchew Yimer (1869-
1957), and would often observe him as he made paintings to be sold. Consequently,
Jembere developed his own style of painting, creating interpretations of popular themes,

as well as new subjects for the traditional painting market, including his well—known

20

scenes of everyday life set in his homeland, the Lake Tana region of Ethiopia. It was at
this time that Jembere experimented with painted portraits, which had become
increasingly popular among the ruling elite since the introduction of photography in
Ethiopia in the early twentieth-century.

Jembere sustained a successful career as a traditional painter until the 1974
Revolution. The Derg discouraged tourism and a Western foreign presence in the capital
and as a result, virtually destroyed the market for traditional paintings. His home and
nearly all the possessions owned by Jembere and his second wife, Bezunesh, were
conﬁscated by agents of the Derg government. Jembere stated that as a result, he painted
nothing during this period. He had just begun painting again before his death in 1993.
Hindered by cataracts during this time, his paintings show a dramatic difference of style
from his earlier work.

This brief summary of the lives of father and son reveals a rather dramatic
contrast. From childhood, Marcos has consistently had an avid interest in painting.
Although he grew up in a time of great political turbulence, Marcos appears to have
sustained an unwavering aspiration to become a professional artist. The experiences of
Jembere, on the other hand, seem to be tied to painting as much as they are to history; his
life, in essence, is a living document of the history of Ethiopia and its painting traditions.
Interestingly, both painters have asserted their individuality in interpreting common
themes and subjects associated with traditional painting. It is a unique opportunity then,
given the comments provided by both artists, to examine in the following chapters, the

manner in which such individuality is expressed.

21

CHAPTER 3

EMPEROR TEWODROS II (1820 - 1868)

For after all, rising from the dusts of 19‘h century Abyssinian anarchy, it
was he who for the ﬁrst time seriously challenged the hegemonic power of
the corrupt clergy and the warring regional lords and who attempted to
establish peace and order in the country. With the boldness that
characterized his actions, it was he who took the ﬁrst initiative to create a
strong and modern Ethiopia out of the dwindling and decadent Empire . . .
Naturally, a man of such a stature could not fail to capture the imagination
of Ethiopian creative writers and that is why, next to the Italian invasion of
the country, he has become one of the most popular historical themes.
Accordingly, Tewodros alone has inspired the writing of six works by
some of the major Ethiopian novelists and playwrights (Taye Assefa 1983,
115).

Since the beginning of the twentieth-century, the life and reign of Emperor

Tewodros II has been a popular subject in traditional painting. Among the more popular

themes in traditional painting, scenes from his life and reign are found as frequently as

those which represent relatively more signiﬁcant battles from the history of Ethiopia,

such as the Battle of Adwa (1896) or Emperor Yohannes’ march to Matamma (1889).

The factors contributing to the popularity of Tewodros’ life among visual and literary

artists have yet to be examined. Although a number of scholars have presented detailed

historical studies of his life and reign, none have presented a comprehensive analysis as

to why his life remains such a popular subject among the people of Ethiopia.

In the paper “Emperor Tewodros II and the Battle of Maqdela (1868) as Depicted

22

in Ethiopian Popular Art” Richard Pankhurst identiﬁes six “types of Tewodros paintings”
that have been repeatedly produced in the twentieth-century (Pankhurst 1988, 281). Each
type includes the image of the Emperor Tewodros, most typically in the following
compositional arrangements: “Portraits; Maqdela battle scenes, featuring his suicide;
Pictures of his law court and punishments; Scenes of his feasts; Paintings depicting his
suicide; Composite pictures.” However, there is little if any discussion of the socio-
cultural or political environment of the times during which certain types of Tewodros
paintings were more popular than others. This is yet another vital question that remains to
be explored by scholars. If it was in fact foreign visitors to Addis Ababa and Ethiopia
who fueled the production of traditional paintings in twentieth-century Ethiopia, did they
also contribute to the popularity of certain themes — such as those of Tewodros that
Pankhurst has identiﬁed? Or were certain themes more popular at certain times during the
twentieth-century because of the social or political environment in which the artists who
produced speciﬁc paintings lived? Additionally, if Pankhurst has identiﬁed as many as
six popular “Tewodros themes,” what were the sources that the painters used for these
particular themes?

This chapter provides a historical background to those events from the life and
reign of Tewodros that Jembere Hailu and Marcos Jembere have featured in their
paintings. Understanding the actual history of Tewodros’ life helps to identify
continuities as well as innovations in each artist’s representation of two different
“Tewodros themes” — scenes from his battle with the British at Maqdela and scenes from
his law court and punishments. The continuities and differences between the two

painters’ treatment of these themes will be discussed in following chapters.

23

Historical accounts of the early life of Kasa, as Tewodros was named prior to his
coronation, typically focus on his life as a shifta and his continual struggle for the
govemorship of Qwara.12 Most historians view the experiences Kasa encountered during
this period as the stimulus for a number of objectives he later tried to pursue as Emperor.
His younger years, from his birth (c. 1820) to approximately 1839 when he was about 20
years old, were heavily inﬂuenced by the powerful Dejazmach Kinfu of Qwara. The
former marriage of his estranged father, the Mesﬁn Hailu Welde Giyorgis of Qwara, to
the niece of the famed Zamana Masafent Dejazmach Maru of Darnbya, made Kasa the
step brother of Kinfu.l3 It was probably because of Kinfu’s father-like relationship to
Kasa, that he received a ﬁne education in Qwara at the convent of Mahbere Sillase
(Rubenson 1966, 29). Despite his illegitimate birth and the supposed common status of
his mother, Weyzero Attitegeb, Kasa became a well—educated young man, versed in
Ethiopian history, literature, and warfare, in addition to more worldly subjects, such as
the Arabic language and European history.14

Kasa was quickly acclimated to the political warfare of the Zamana Masafent.
Accompanying the Dejazmach on the frequent military campaigns and probably

participating directly in the violence of many of them, it was during this time, as

 

7 . . . .
1" Qwara was the northwest region of what IS now present—day Ethiopia.

'3 The Zamana Masafent is usually referred to as the “Era of the Princes," which endured roughly from
1750 to 1850 and was, as Shiferaw Bekele (1990, 26-27) states “the period when Ethiopia was divided
within itself into several regions with no effective central authority . . . the lords constantly fought against
each other for aggrandizement of their territory and to become the guardians of King of Kings at Gondar. .
. . Coalitions and alliances between the lords were constantly formed and dissolved in this period . . .
internal crisis was further aggravated by the doctrinal divisions within the church.”

14 Most scholars assert the common status of Tewodros’ mother who is said to have worked as a market
vendor selling koso, a purgative ingested to cure tapeworm. See Taddesse Tamrat ( 1991 , 1 17-125), for an
account of the koso-vendor story typically discussed in reference to Attitegeb. This includes a rarely

24

Rubenson (1966, 31) points out, that “some traits in Kasa’s character — bravery almost to
the point of recklessness, a kind of fatalism and a certain disregard of human life,” were
most likely formulated. The death of Kinfu in 1839 marked a new period in Kasa’s life.
Kasa sought the governorship of Qwara, and for about ten years, constantly contended for
the position with the Yajju Ras Ali 11 (r. 1831-1853) and his powerful mother, the
Empress Manan Liban.

The question of Kasa’s official legitimacy repeatedly obstructed any rightful
claims he could make to the territory, and regardless of his exceptional military ability or
popularity among the people, he was forced to attain the governorship by force.'5
Threatened by the potential of an illegitimate heir seizing power, the Empress Manan
continually attempted to shut Kasa out of the Yajju realm. Kasa in turn took on the life of
a shifta and formed his own sizable army.

During this shifta period Kasa became notorious not only for his pillaging of
caravans, villages, and farms but also for sharing his booty with the peasants of Qwara. It
was Kasa’s shifta days, as Bahru Zewde (1991, 28) explains

that were probably the most formative period of his life. It was then that

some of the enduring features of his personality were conﬁrmed . . . his

simplicity and disdain for pomp. He lived the life of his followers, taking

part even in ploughing and sowing. Another feature was his concern for

social justice. His distribution of money that he had acquired by robbery to

the peasants, so that they could buy ploughs, had an element of Robin
Hood about it.

Kasa became increasingly popular among the people of Qwara during this period.

 

included reference to her later life (see d’Abbadie, 1868) in which she becomes a nun and wears a white
ab.
5 It has almost always been assumed that Tewodros invented any afﬁliations with actual royal ancestors.
Rubenson (1990, 19) however, calls for a re-examination of the possibility that real royal ancestry did
actually play a role in his rise to power.

25

Consequently, the Empress Manan repeatedly attempted to stiﬂe his power. One legend
which historians often use to illustrate the failure of Manan and her supporters to stop
Kasa is that which involved the Qanjazmach Wendyerad. Apparently it was Qanjazmach
Wendyerad who had boasted to Manan that he “would bring in the son of the koso-
vendor” (Rubenson 1966, 37). As an example of his vengeance and pride for his mother,
Kasa supposedly forced Wendyerad to drink an entire horn of koso before his shifta
army.”

Manan herself even provided her own granddaughter Tewabech’s hand in
marriage to Kasa in an attempt to prevent his opposition to the Yajju line. But it wasn’t
until 1847, when Kasa ultimately defeated and imprisoned the Empress and her husband
Yohannes 111 near the northern shores of Lake Tana, that he was ofﬁcially presented the
governorship of Qwara. Yet, the governorship which the Ras Ali seemingly awarded to
Kasa to contain his rise to power, merely further empowered him to dominate the
surrounding regions.

It took an embarrassing defeat in 1848 against the Egyptians at the Battle of
Dabarqi for Kasa to emerge as a mature contender among the Zamana Masafent leaders.
Probably the single most signiﬁcant outcome of this defeat was “his lifelong obsession
with the ‘Turk,’ and his wild dream of liberating Jerusalem from their rule” (Bahru 1991,
28). But Kasa also observed the keen discipline and advanced weaponry of the Egyptians
and immediately sought to instill both in his troops. Consequently, his troops became an
unstoppable force (primarily due to their ﬁne discipline) and for the next seven years

consecutively defeated each of the key ﬁgures of the Zamana Masafent.

 

'6 Rubenson (1966, 19) attributes the source of this legend to the chronicle written during Tewodros’ life
by Zeneb.

26

The Battle of Ayshal (1853), in which Kasa’s army defeated and exiled Ras Ali, is
commonly referred to as the end of the Zamana Masafent. However, it actually was not
until Kasa’s army defeated the forces of Dejazmach Wube of Simien at the Battle of
Deresge (February 1855) that the Zamana Masafent was ﬁnally and completely
dissolved. The equally as signiﬁcant provinces of Yeju, Wello, Tigray, and Shewa
however, still remained unallied with Kasa’s cause and it would be the control of these
distant provinces that would plague Kasa to his death.

On February 11, 1855, merely two days after the Battle of Deresge, “in Wube’s
own church, Deresge Mariam, Abuna Salama crowned Kassa as Tewodros II, King of
Kings of Ethiopia” (Marcus 1994, 64). '7 The selection of the name Tewodros was a
decisive move on the part of the Emperor to identify directly with the peasants.

By taking this regal name, the new emperor laid claim to the national myth

about the hallowed reign of Tewodros I (r. 1412-1413), who reputedly

redistributed land to the peasants and who came to be regarded as a

‘hidden Mahdi’ who would return to bring justice to the people (Marcus

1994, 65).

Rubenson (1966, 51) and Marcus (1994, 68) concur that Tewodros felt a great sense of
responsibility and mission in taking this name and possibly even believed that he was
indeed the apocalyptic “slave of Christ” as mentioned in the F ikkare Iyesus. '8

Consequently, from the outset, Tewodros established objectives which addressed social

justice for the common people, such as reforms in the government and land ownership,

 

'7 Marcus (1994, 63-64) describes the ramiﬁcations of the 1854 Council of Amba Chara at which Kasa
presided and joined forces with Abuna Salama as a “call to Orthodoxy” or a reassertion of the Tawahedo
Doctrine, i.e. the belief in the inseparability of Christ’s human and divine natures. In sum, the alliance
brought Kasa a major supporter of a uniﬁed Ethiopia, a believer in the separation of civil and sacred affairs,
and a religious ofﬁcial who was needed in the ceremony of his imperial coronation.

'8 According to Prouty and Rosenfeld (1981, 68), the F ikkare lyesus is “an apocalyptic work which
predicted that Christ would bring a man named Tewodros to power after along period of corruption,
perversity and lawlessness.”

27

both to foster their support and attain his own personal goals.

Scholars also agree that Tewodros, in attempting to implement such radical
reforms, was the ﬁrst modern minded Emperor of Ethiopia. Donald Crummey (1969,
457) supports this, writing that:

Tewodros is the father of modern Ethiopia in the sense that he conceived

the idea of a united, strong, and progressive Ethiopian state, the peer of

any other state in the world . . . he was Ethiopia’s ﬁrst monarch with a

concept (however vague) of modernization, to the vigor and relevance of

his response to the new forces of foreign inﬂuence which became felt

throughout the ﬁrst half of the nineteen century, and to the extraordinary

breadth of his personality, which must be seen in the context of this

response.

Indeed it was in response to both increasingly threatening European and Islamic powers
that Tewodros developed two persistent obsessions: one, of ruling a uniﬁed Ethiopia and
the other, of modernizing the nation to the level of foreign (speciﬁcally European)
technologies so that resistance to Muslim forces could be maintained (Crummey 1969,
459, 462). These two major concerns would greatly effect Tewodros’ policies as
Emperor.

In striving for uniﬁcation, Tewodros ﬁrst established a series of military reforms.
He replaced the regional armies of the past with a centralized national army, introduced a
new hierarchy of command for the varying levels of leadership, and initiated an actual
wage based compensation system (for the soldiers as well as governmental ofﬁcials),
instead of the previously accepted method of pillaging (Bahru 1991, 33). The Emperor

was also quick to realize that military uniﬁcation meant little unless it was supported by

domestic uniﬁcation. He thus initiated new reforms which speciﬁcally focused on

28

reversing the anarchy of the Zamana Masafent.l9

By introducing such reforms as his “policy of general paciﬁcation,” the Emperor
promoted security and prosperity for the citizens of his Empire (Pankhurst 1991, 133). He
encouraged the common people to return to their “lawful avocation, the merchant to his
store, and the farmer to his plough” (Lejean 1855, in Pankhurst 1991, 133) and
introduced a new administration of justice to thwart thieves and other criminals, such as
bandits who looted the countryside.

In the new form of administration, any wronged individual was encouraged to
plea their case directly before Tewodros, wherever he set up camp (Morgan 1969, 259).20
The system, according to Rubenson (1966, 55), succeeded to a near-excessive extent, in
terms of the amount of time Tewodros had to invest. It did not, however, subdue the
severity of punishments for major crimes such as execution or mutilation for robbery,
murder, treason or rebellion.

The type of mutilation which Tewodros prohibited was the emasculation

of captured enemies. He also abolished the established custom that

kinsmen of a murderer or even someone who had caused the death of

another person by accident had to answer with their lives or a ransom even

if they were completely innocent of the crime or accident (Rubenson 1966,
55).

These reforms are often overlooked when compared to the severity of those punishments
that Tewodros employed to condemn offenders he thought deserving of penance. Despite
using excessive violence, Tewodros made valid inroads to protect and provide justice and
economic development for the Ethiopian people (Marcus 1994, 68). His reform of the

Ethiopian Orthodox church however, had yet to be achieved.

 

'9 See Pankhurst (1991, 127- 144) for a review of the numerous additional reforms that Tewodros attempted
to implement as Emperor.

29

Tewodros’ attempted reforms directed toward the Ethiopian Orthodox clergy
were related to his two fundamental concerns. First, to unify the doctrinally divided
Orthodox church was to attain political uniﬁcation. As Rubenson (1966, 72) explains, “in
the predominantly Christian population of the regional kingdoms or chieftainships that
Tewodros set out to unify, the authority of the spokesmen of the Church was more wide-
spread than any other.” Second, in order to maintain his national army, critical to
resisting foreign (i.e., Egyptian and/or Muslim) powers and securing the respect of
European (Christian) powers, Tewodros sought a more substantial ﬁnancial base (Bahru
1991, 35).

Earlier, at the Council of Amba Chara in 1854, it was arranged that the Abuna
Salama would become the functional head of the Church in return for Tewodros’
enforcement of the Tawahedo Doctrine.2| Consequently, Tewodros had clearly instituted
a separation of the powers of Church and State, while the Abuna had established some
sense of uniﬁcation among the clergy. This arrangement stood in direct conﬂict with the
economic policies Tewodros attempted to implement (Bahru 1991, 35).

Tewodros ﬁrst sought absolute authority over the clergy by insisting that they
remove their turbans, or temtem, in his presence (Bahru 1991, 35). A gesture typically
reserved exclusively for the inner sanctuary of a church, i.e. in reverence to God. The
clergy refused. Instead of backing down, Tewodros again attempted to assert his supreme
authority as well as foster additional governmental revenues for the support of his army

by proposing a ﬁxed limit to the untaxed land owned by a church. He proposed that any

 

20 See Scholler and Fisseha (1985) for a descriptive account of the judicial proceedings of the open-air
court.

2' See footnote seventeen for a detailed explanation of the 1854 Council of Amba Chara and the Tawahedo
Doctrine.

30

the

tisr

land which exceeded the limit would be given to tax paying farmers and that the excess
or unassigned clerics in a church would work and pay taxes (Rubenson 1966, 66; Morgan
1969, 261). Four years later, despite the outrage of the clergy, Tewodros enacted the
proposed land limit, thereby alienating the church and directing all responsibilities for
uniﬁcation to his military forces (Rubenson 1966, 72; Bahru 1991, 35).

From 1857 to 1861, perpetual rebellions (often instigated by mistaking enemies as
loyal allies) in the provinces of Wello, Gojjam, Lasta and Shawa, forced Tewodros and
his troops constantly to journey to each of the provinces and battle for control. Tewodros
became increasingly dependent upon the force of his military to control the opposition
and the number of his soldiers (and the revenue to support them) rapidly increased
(Morgan 1969, 262). As his failed attempts became more frequent, violent methods
became standard, and his troops were forced to return to the previously established
method of gratiﬁcation -- looting. “Tewodros found himself the emperor of only that part
of Ethiopia through which he and his large army marched, and no amount of pillaging
and looting and terrorism seemed to make much of a difference” (Marcus 1994, 69). Yet
to be addressed however, was his alliance with European powers against the impeding
Muslim forces and their assistance in instructing his own countrymen on the manufacture
of modern weapons.

In the village of Gafat, near Debra Tabor, Tewodros established a gun-foundry
and workshop in which all foreigners who entered the country were forced to instruct
Ethiopian youths on the manufacture of personal weapons and major artillery, especially,
the manufacture of cannons (Rubenson 1966, 74; Bahru 1991, 34). The whole

mismatched attempt in which only a limited number of functional weapons were

31

manufactured, underscores Tewodros’ obsession with acquiring the necessary ﬁre power
to consider Ethiopia an equal to European and other powers of the world.

Tewodros not only sought the Europeans’ assistance for their newer technology
but also support in Ethiopia’s resistance to Islam. In 1862, Tewodros appealed to England
and France in letters which requested support against Islam and stated that he wished to
send envoys to their courts to discuss the possibility of future diplomatic exchanges
(Rubenson 1966, 84). And although Tewodros included Russia, Austria, and Prussia in
this diplomatic campaign, it was “towards the British that he manifested a special, almost
affectionate regard. It was to be one of his tragedies that this affection went
unreciprocated” (Bahru 1991, 36). Tewodros observed at least two separate instances in
which Britain had communicated with diplomats in Ethiopia but had not acknowledged
his letters or their contents. Insulted by this demonstrated lack of regard for what
Tewodros found Ethiopia’s most immediate concerns, he imprisoned a number of the
British diplomats and foreign missionaries.

The years from 1863 to 1866 were marked by a number of improperly interpreted
and mishandled attempts by the British to negotiate with Tewodros for the release of the
captives. In 1866, the Queen of England (who was previously unaware of the situation)
was ﬁnally informed of the quandary and responded by sending a special envoy with a
letter of conciliation to Tewodros. The letter asked for the delivery of the hostages at
Massawa in exchange for the Emperor’s initial demands for diplomatic alliance. Again,
as a consequence of mistranslation, Tewodros imprisoned the messenger and sent his
ﬁnal envoy to the Queen.

The ﬁnal request by Tewodros speciﬁcally demanded that an assortment of

32

various weapons and instructors for artillery construction be sent to Ethiopia in exchange
for the captives. In April 1867, Tewodros received Britain’s surprising letter of
agreement to meet the aforementioned demands. The same letter, however, also issued a
warning. Unless the captives were released in Massawa, the Queen would send an army
to Ethiopia to retrieve her subjects (Marcus 1994, 70). By this time, Massawa, as well as
nearly every province in Tewodros’ empire, did not acknowledge Tewodros as Emperor.
Thus, Tewodros was unable to meet the British in Massawa, never responded to the
Queen’s ﬁnal attempt to negotiate, and thereby invited the British to invade Ethiopia.

Concurrent with his foreign problems were the domestic problems with which
Tewodros had been struggling since 1857. The years of 1864 through 1867 brought
increasing random acts of brutal force and violence to silence provincial uprisings, such
as the burning and looting of Gonder and areas of Dambiya in 1864 (Crummey 1971,
123). When Menelik of Shewa (r. 1889-1913) escaped from Maqdela in July of 1865,

Tewodros ordered twenty-nine Wello dignitaries massacred and a dozen

Amhara notables beaten to death with bamboo rods. . . . In mid-1867,

when the imperial garrison in Goj jam defected, Tewodros mindlessly

ordered eight hundred innocent Wello soldiers slaughtered because he felt,

with no evidence, that they were about to desert (Marcus 1994, 70).
Near the end of 1867, the Emperor was forced to leave his capital, Debra Tabor, (which
be burned upon departing) and seek shelter at the only remaining territory of his empire,
the natural fortress of Maqdela. Arriving six months later at Maqdela, the 60,000 soldier
army Tewodros once directed, now numbered no more than 5,000. Meanwhile, as Queen
Victoria had advised in her letter of 1867, Sir Robert Napier and his Anglo-Indian army

of 32,000 entered Ethiopia through Massawa in October 1867.

The Dejazmach Kasa of Tigray (the future Emperor Yohannes IV, r. 1872-1889)

33

assisted in the search for Tewodros and the British prisoners he held captive. The British
faced the Emperor at Maqdela on April 10, 1868. Fitawrari Gabreye, an old friend of
Tewodros, led the Ethiopian troops in their attack on the British on the plain of Aroge,
just below the Maqdela fortress. Tewodros however, remained with the cannon, above
the plain at Fala, the ridge between Maqdela and adjacent peaks (Rubenson 1966, 88).

The actual battle lasted no more than three hours. The 2,000 British troops with
their highly effective artillery easily crushed Tewodros’ 4,000 war weary soldiers, armed
with locally crafted weapons. At the end of the day, 700 to 800 Ethiopians had been
killed and nearly 1500 had been wounded, whereas two British soldiers had been killed
and a mere twenty wounded (Rubenson 1966, 89).

The following morning, Tewodros sent a last minute peace delegation to Napier.
Napier would only agree to peace with the personal surrender of the Emperor. Tewodros
responded with a desperate but confusing letter in which he suggested suicide over
surrender.

More important, the whole letter, which was directed as much to the

Ethiopian people and posterity as to the British general, indicated that the

writer had reached the end of his dream, his struggle — and endurance. He

did not even use his royal titles: King of Kings, elect of God — or the

glorious throne-name under which he had striven so hard to change

Ethiopia: he wrote simply as ‘Kasa, whose trust is in Christ’ (Rubenson

1976, 265).22

Saturday evening, Tewodros made his ﬁrst suicide attempt, but was thwarted by
his few remaining followers. He consequently released a ﬁrst group of prisoners to
Napier with yet another letter. This letter stated his intentions to send the General an

Easter gift of cows and sheep in addition to the remaining prisoners. Tewodros had

intended the gift as a peace settlement or actually as an attempt to prevent the British

from storming Maqdela yet one more time. In a somewhat confusing exchange, Napier
never fully understood the Emperor’s intention but did receive the remaining prisoners on
Sunday. Tewodros thus interpreted the exchange as deception and on April 13, 1868,
dissolved his army from Maqdela and faced the bombardment of 3,500 British soldiers on
Maqdela with no more than twenty men (Marcus 1994, 72).23 The British stormed the
butte in a matter of hours and just before they discovered Tewodros, he had held a pistol
to his mouth and killed himself. The British concluded their mission by looting the
Maqdela treasury, collecting a sizable quantity of valued national treasures for their trip
home, including an extensive collection of illuminated manuscripts and books (including
the copy of the Kebra Negast which Tewodros is said to have kept under his pillow) and
ofﬁcial regalia, such as the Emperor's crown and the royal seal. The eight year old son of
the Emperor, Alemayehu was handed over to the British by his mother, Teruwarq, to be
cared for in England in accordance with Tewodros’ pre-suicide request.

Tewodros was buried on April 14, 1868, without a ceremony, on the Maqdela
plateau, and three days later, the British left Maqdela but before doing so razed it to the
ground. The British began their journey home, and as they had stated prior to their entry
at Massawa, with no intentions of conquest or occupation, entirely evacuated Massawa
by June 1868.

It is without question that both Britain and Ethiopia created their own individual
myths about the Battle of Maqdela and the suicide of Tewodros. The British perhaps

overdramatized the Battle as being more signiﬁcant than history actually states - the

 

22 See also Pankhurst ( 1987, 23-42).

23 Rarely mentioned is the inability of Tewodros or his soldiers to ﬂee from Maqdela because they had
been surrounded by both British and Oromo forces. Rubenson even writes of Napier’s offer to the

surrounding Oromo of 50,000 thalers for the Emperor’s capture (Rubenson 1976, 267).

35

 

Ethiopians possibly too readily transformed an Emperor who had actually sealed his fate
prior to the standoff at Maqdela into a symbol of “the spirit, virtues and aspirations of the
Ethiopian people” (Rubenson 1991, 14).24

A detailed analysis of these interpretations of history requires research which
extends beyond the scope of this paper. This chapter is a selective overview of the life
and reign of Tewodros that includes those aspects of his life which are most frequently
depicted in paintings of Tewodros — scenes from his youth, his violent administration of
justice, the conﬂict at Maqdela and his suicide before the British troops. The following
chapters consider how the life history of Tewodros is represented by two artists from two
different generations. The events from his life that the artists illustrate in their paintings
are indicative of the socio-political environment in which they were raised. Their

paintings ultimately reﬂect their own interpretation of a popular theme.

 

24 The British, who spent nine million pounds on the expedition and had only two soldiers fatally wounded,
perhaps invented much of the drama to rationalize their involvement in what was little more than an
“incident” (Rubenson 1991, 13). Bates (1979, 202) writes “the Battle of Magdala, as it was called in the
newspapers and periodicals of the day, was generally reported as a great victory for British arms, but, as a
staff ofﬁcer who was writing for Blackwood's at the time remarked, there was in truth, ‘little of stirring
military or military prowess to record.’ The Times correspondent, who tried hard to be fair and forgiving,
added sadly: ‘as a patriot, perhaps the less I say of this siege the better'.”

Conversely, the Napier expedition, in honoring the promise only to rescue the captives and not to occupy
or overthrow the areas in which they traveled, stood in bold contrast to the “scramble for African colonial
possessions” (Bahru 1991, 4) of the later century and was perhaps viewed as an embarrassment to the
British. Thus we encounter the need for Maqdela to be presented in more of the tone of the following
century or as a critical victory of Colonial powers.

36

CHAPTER 4

TWO TWENTIETH-CENTURY TRADITIONAL PAINTINGS:
A FORMAL ANALYSIS

Chapter three presented a brief account of Tewodros’ rule and the popularity of
his image in twentieth-century Ethiopian painting. This chapter compares two paintings
of Tewodros and the Battle of Maqdela, painted by Marcos Jembere and Jembere Hailu,
so that formal continuities and differences between the two paintings can be identiﬁed.
Because of their thematic consistency, these two paintings provide an excellent
opportunity to examine questions of tradition and change associated with twentieth-
century painting in Ethiopia.

The paintings under discussion both illustrate scenes from the royal court of
Emperor Tewodros, various forms of punishment, and the Battle of Maqdela. Figure one
was painted by Jembere Hailu in the mid-19805 and was purchased by the Ziirich
Volkerkundemuseum (no. 10032) from the well-known curio shop owner, Solomon
Belatchew. Figure two was painted by Marcos Jembere having been commissioned by
Raymond Silverman in 1993 for the Michigan State University Museum collection (no.
7557.14) for the exhibition, Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity. Overall, the stylistic
treatment in both paintings seems quite similar. Both paintings are “composite themes”
that portray different periods of time and their respective images from the Emperor’s life
(Pankhurst 1994, 287).

As stated in earlier chapters, Marcos learned to paint from his father, Jembere.

37

Because of this, certain stylistic consistencies between their two paintings, such as their
treatment of subject matter, composition, or use of line, are easily recognizable. For
instance, both Marcos and Jembere feature Emperor Tewodros in both the upper left and
upper right corners of their paintings and use a sharp crevasse to deﬁne the landscape
elevations. Both also use horizontally placed ﬁgures to frame the lower borders of
different subject areas.

The artistic inﬂuence of father on son is most noticeable in each artists’ use of
line and gesture to communicate the intensity of their subject. Almost indistinguishably,
both painters use the line and direction of guns, spears, and swords to direct the viewer’s
eye toward different areas within their paintings. Both also identify the particular ﬁgures
within the compositions and the action in which each participates by differentiating each
ﬁgures’ line of vision or the angle of the tilt of their head. An example of this can be seen
in the sweeping diagonals in the soldiers’ gestures in the lower right comer of Jembere’s
painting or those soldiers that Marcos has depicted scaling the hillside on the ladder,
whose eyes progressively direct the viewer to the immediate action of the scene at the
peak of the plateau.

Marcos uses the same black contour lines as his father to delineate the form of
the ﬁgures in both paintings. Volume and movement are communicated in an identical
fashion with the use of strong black drapery lines that parallel the movement of the ﬁgure
and accentuate individual actions. Individual ﬁgures are somewhat indiscriminately
differentiated by skin color in both paintings, however both exhibit consistent
representations of the Emperor and the British army with lighter colored skin.

While it may be difﬁcult to distinguish the paintings of Marcos from those of his

38

father, the two paintings which feature the Tewodros themes do reﬂect certain stylistic
distinctions. Marcos has created a more compartmentalized and rigorously structured
composition than his father. The intent of Marcos to delineate between various scenes is
obvious in the decorative borders he uses to separate each scene. Depth of space appears
to be a primary concern. Unlike his father, Marcos uses depth-building techniques to
construct the environment for each subject area. Tree lines are used to create depth within
each punishment scene and simple overlapping is used to create the expansive mountain
bluffs between which soldiers march in the central panel.

Jembere relies upon the individual ﬁgures themselves to ﬁll the space and create
depth, favoring social, not linear, perspective. He includes fewer ﬁgures, typically paints
each in a larger size, and stresses the interaction between individual ﬁgures through line
and gesture. As a result, Jembere creates a more intimate view to each thematic grouping.
This is made apparent by comparing the interior scenes at the upper left corner of both
paintings.

The difference in the painting styles of Jembere and Marcos is subtle. Jembere’s
inﬂuence is readily noted in the ﬁgures that Marcos paints. But the apparent concern of
Marcos for formal elements, such as perspective and compositional arrangement, presents
interesting questions. Can these differences be attributed to the painting education each
has received? Did Jembere’s own experience in the military effect his expressiveness
when painting historic battle scenes? Or does his style reﬂect the formal education he
received as a painter in the Orthodox church? Has the artistic training that Marcos
received in primary and secondary school overshadowed that which he received from his

father at home? Before questions of inﬂuence, innovation, and individual style can be

39

discussed, the iconography used by Marcos and Jembere must ﬁrst be examined.
Observing both artist’s stylistic and iconographic treatment of the same theme, true

similarities and differences between the two paintings can be identiﬁed.

40

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of Ethiopian Studies Museum.

51

 

CHAPTER 5

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS: ICONOGRAPHY & INSCRIPTIONS

Traditional paintings that represent the Emperor Tewodros and the Battle of
Maqdela date to the early decades of the twentieth-century such as ﬁgure 3.25 These
paintings closely emulate earlier interpretations (ﬁgure 4) of the Battle of Adwa, a theme
that had been established around the turn of the century.26 New, independent themes,
such as scenes in ﬁgures 5 and 6 of the assault of the Maqdela amba (or mountain), and
portraits of Tewodros, surfaced later in the 19305 and 19405. Following the liberation of
Ethiopia from Italian occupation in 1941, new subjects and themes related to Tewodros
and his life emerged. In addition to the prevalent Maqdela theme, Tewodros is presented
in scenes of open-air courts and the issuing of punishments (ﬁgure 7), suicide paintings
(ﬁgure 8), and festive, royal banquet scenes. Composite themes featuring separate
sections or subject areas have been noted only recently in traditional paintings of the last
twenty to twenty-ﬁve years, such as the two paintings under discussion or the painting by
Berhanu Yimenu (ﬁgure 9).

The iconography used to depict Tewodros in paintings is easily identiﬁed but, like
that used to represent the Battle of Adwa, much remains to be examined in detail.
Similarly, a detailed historical analysis of such images has yet to be undertaken. In this

chapter, I compare the subject matter and inscriptions used by Jembere and Marcos to

 

25 I wish to thank Professor Richard Pankhurst for his valuable comments regarding this subject. This

chapter references information presented in his 1994 paper, “Emperor Tewodros II and the Battle of
Maqdela (1868) as Depicted in Ethiopian Popular Art.”

52

represent the popular “Tewodros and the Battle of Maqdela” theme, and demonstrate that
not only the subject matter used by both painters, but the inscriptions that are featured
with the various scenes, reﬂect a distinct interpretation by each artist.

The two paintings present similar compositional groupings. Three particular
thematic areas are found in both paintings: the interior view of Tewodros seated in his
court, various scenes of punishment, and the troops at Maqdela and the suicide of
Tewodros just before the British siege. Inscriptions are included in each of these sections.

Both artists represent the Emperor seated in his court in the upper left corner of
the painting. The captions, ﬁgures, and material culture included in this area of each
recall those found in traditional paintings (ﬁgures 7, 10, 11) that depict the Emperor at his
court of justice. Both painters identify Tewodros with his signature beard, coiffure, and
spear, and use the gathered folds of curtains to frame the scene. Differences are noted,
however.

Jembere introduces this scene with the caption, “Emperor Tewodros’ Law Court”
and using social perspective, emphasizes the importance of the two central ﬁgures
through their size. Tewodros is uncharacteristically represented in proﬁle. The throne-
like structure upon which he is seated with the perched lions at his feet contribute to the
grandeur of the setting and are nearly identical to those used to depict Tewodros in ﬁgure
10. The physical proportion of the columnar ﬁgure to the right rivals that of the Emperor
and suggests that he is of comparable political importance (Pankhurst 1994, 287). The
book which he presents before Tewodros includes the caption, “F etha Nagast” and

identiﬁes this ﬁgure as “a distinguished priest who, according to tradition, reads from the

 

26 The Battle of Adwa theme is considered to be one of the oldest in traditional painting, typically
recognized as the ﬁrst “traditional painting theme.” See Pankhurst (1966, 5-80;1986, 78-103).

53

F etha Nagast before the Gebbi (palace) in order to present the spiritual, religious and also
the worldly law in the form of a report” (Schbller and Girma 1985, 166) or, because of
the temtem he wears, the Abuna Salama.27

Marcos introduces this panel with the caption “the judgement of Emperor
Tewodros” and represents this subject in a different way than his father. The signature
beard, coiffure, and spear, easily identify Tewodros, but instead of using relative
proportion to communicate Tewodros’ importance, he uses the table top to physically
distinguish the Emperor from the other ﬁgures. Despite the blue robe used to signify his
regal status, he is not as readily identiﬁed as in Jembere’s rendering. The book, as in
Jembere’s painting, bridges the interaction between ﬁgures and serves as a focal point in
the scene. Marcos does not, however, literally label the book “F etha Nagast,” but
suggests this fact by including a cross on the cover. Apparently representing the same
theme as his father, but relying more on subtle iconography, Marcos depicts one of the
ﬁgures seated at the opposite side of the table wearing a temtem, suggesting that this is
the Abuna Salama. Another ﬁgure, with a tied neckerchief, is recognizable as one of the
distinguished priests who reads the law to the court, as noted in earlier representations of
this subject.

The second subject area found in both paintings is comprised of various panels
that illustrate the assignment of punishments. Though not a theme strictly reserved for
representations of the Emperor Tewodros, open-air court and punishment themes are

typically associated with the reign of Tewodros. This connection may have been

 

27 According to Prouty and Rosenfeld ( 1981, 68) the Fetha Nagast or “Laws of the Kings," was produced
in the 13’" century as a compilation of Old and New Testament sources. Comprised of over 50 chapters that
address spiritual and temporal conduct, the work includes deﬁnitions of crimes and punishments, rules for

54

established through the historic judicial reforms that were implemented during Tewodros’
reign, commonly referred to as his “new system of justice”.28 Punishment acts
represented in both paintings by Marcos and Jembere pattern those depicted in earlier
works (ﬁgures 7, 10, 11) but variations can be noted in both interpretations.

Despite rendering those acts of punishment that are frequently found in open-air
court scenes, such as ﬂogging, hanging, and beating, Jembere has reinterpreted some
minor details. The hanging scene, which includes the caption “hanging,” does not feature
a mourning female ﬁgure, almost always found in similar scenes, such as in ﬁgures 10
and 11. The scene in which a bloodied ﬁgure is strewn across the ground, which contains
the caption “ﬂogging,” features the unique representation of a ﬁgure who points
administratively at the victim. Jembere abbreviates the iconography in this area and
simply communicates the authority of the standing ﬁgure through his pointing gesture
and the book clenched to his chest. Jembere neglects to include the more typical elements
such as an identifying costume or position to communicate that this ﬁgure is a Ligaba
(court supervisor) or a priest, often shown reading from the F etha Nagast in open-air
court and punishment scenes (Pankhurst 1994, 289).

Jembere’s most innovative interpretation of the punishment theme, however, is
found in the panel that includes the captions “Dejazmach” and “koso” and shows two
ﬁgures forcing the captive to drink from a cup. Because of the captions, the captive can

be clearly identiﬁed as Wendyerad, the rival ﬁgure from the early historical accounts of

 

marriage, property and its inheritance. For a brief explanation of the signiﬁcance of the temtem see Chapter
3, 30.

28 Scenes of open-air courts and punishments include other famous Ethiopian rulers, such as Emperor Haile
Selassie (Scholler and Girma 1985, 168-171). Plowden (1868, 150), however, credits Tewodros as having
initiated the process. See also Chapter 3, 28-29.

55

Tewodros’ life, and the cup and ensero (or clay jug) as containing koso-infused liquid.29
According to chronicles that were written during this period of Tewodros’ life,
Wondyerad was forced to drink an entire horn of koso before Kasa’s shifta army because
he had vowed to “bring in the son of the koso-vendor alive.”30 In this section of the
painting, Jembere has demonstrated his characteristic “reinterpretation of traditional
themes” (Pankhurst 1994, 287) by presenting a new subject, or the unique form of
punishment and one particularly relevant to the historical theme of the painting itself, to
an established theme, or scenes of open-air court and punishments.

In contrast to his father, Marcos relies upon those more conventional acts of
punishment used in earlier open-air court and punishment scenes to communicate the
actions of this particular section within the painting. The punishments that Marcos
presents, captioned in the left column as “ﬂogging,” and “amputation of the leg,” and in

9’ 66

the right column as “cutting of the tongue, amputation of the arm,” “hanging,” and
“stoned to death,” are invariably used to communicate Tewodros’ administration of
justice, with the exception that Marcos has not included the additional burning at the
stake subject, as depicted in previous examples (ﬁgures 7, 10, 11).

The inﬂuence of his father’s iconographic conventions are detected, however, in
two different ways. He has ﬁrst included the reinterpreted punishment scene of his
father’s, captioned “Wendyerad being forced to gulp the bitter liquid of koso.” And has

also used the similar physical setting and additional accoutrements, such as the ensero, to

suggest the setting of the scene. This melding by Marcos of the conventional subjects of

 

29 Rubenson (1966, 37) refers to Wendyerad’s ofﬁcial ofﬁce as that of Qenjazmach. This suggests a
slightly less elevated status than the title of Dejazmach, as Jembere has written.

30 See Chapter 3 for a detailed account of this story. See also Rubenson (1966, 37), especially footnote
eight for the origin of this tradition.

56

earlier representations of this theme and the newer, reinterpreted iconography of his
father, is also noted in the following section of the painting.

This ﬁnal subject area of the paintings, that which represents the March of
Tewodros and his troops to Maqdela followed by his suicide before the British, and the
relationship of the captions and the subject matter that both artists have selected to use in
these areas, underscores their distinct expressions.

Jembere’s caption, featured directly above the equestrian ﬁgure in the lower left
corner of the painting, reads, “Emperor Tewodros marches against Maqdela” and that
placed above the cannon states, “cannon called Tewodros, was pushed to Maqdela.” Both
texts allude to the artist’s interpretation of the imagery he presents. The equestrian ﬁgure
of Tewodros, with his signature coiffure, elaborately dressed horse, and spear in-hand,
surrounded by those remaining followers, armed with spears, indicates they are in fact
marching to conﬂict. Jembere’s inclusion of the oversized blue cannon being pushed by
two soldiers speciﬁcally references the acclaimed super-mortar named “Tewodros”
which, “was dragged in 1867 all the way up to the Maqdela massif at considerable
sacriﬁce” (Bahru 1991, 34). Indeed, the subject matter and details of this area refer to
Tewodros’ march with his troops to Maqdela prior to the actual battle.

Like the captions Jembere has used in this area, the subject matter - Tewodros
armed on horseback, surrounded by armed soldiers who work to advance the oversized
cannon — provides immediate historical reference to the events leading up to The Battle
or Tewodros’ march to the Maqdela amba. Recalling earlier paintings that represent The
Battle and the assault of the amba, such as ﬁgures 5 and 6, the vertically stacked subject

grouping to the right of the crevasse can be identiﬁed as two separate or successive

57

events - i.e., a central conﬂict in the Battle and Tewodros’ suicide at Maqdela.

In this area, Jembere has again included only those symbols and captions that
communicate the most identiﬁable and dramatic aspects of the assault of the amba and
the suicide. Drawing upon conventional iconographic elements, Jembere represents
Tewodros’ soldiers in white, wielding blood-covered spears, and facing the ﬁring guns of
the darkly uniformed British soldiers. The groups are identiﬁed with the label “Ethiopian
army” on the left, and “English army” at the right. The ﬁgure positioned at the lower
right border of this area strongly resembles those images of Tewodros in the upper and
lower left sections of the painting. He is, however, rendered with a slightly different
coiffure and in a location not typically used for representations of Tewodros. His
importance is conveyed through relative size and his position among the stack of bodies.
This is echoed in the caption that borders his face and reads “Fitawrari Gabreye fell”,
identifying this particular scene as one representing the Battle of Aroge (where Gabreye
was slain) that occurred on April 10, 1868, or roughly two days before the actual Battle
of Maqdela.3 '

The ﬁnal event, the suicide of Emperor Tewodros, is then depicted in the upper
right comer area of the painting. Again, Jembere has presented the most recognizable
symbols of this particular event — the elevated ﬂat amba, the brick wall, and the cannon,
in addition to the oversized, bloodied ﬁgure, and mourning onlookers. The captions,
“Lord Napier, the Englishman,” “death of the Emperor Tewodros,” and “Alemayehu,”
and subjects used, quickly identify the scene and its key ﬁgures. Lord Napier supported

by a few of his soldiers is represented in a dark, British uniform. Tewodros is easily

58

recognized through his relative proportion, and in a supine position, deceased. The
relatively diminutive proportion of the young man who is dressed in white who gestures
dramatically is presumed to be Tewodros’ mourning son, Alemayehu. Dressed in a black
robe, Teruwarq, the wife of Tewodros, mourns beside Alemayehu, above the fallen
Emperor’s body.32

Jembere’s new, subtle interpretations to these standard subjects can be seen,
however. Rather than emulate the historically accurate, older representations of
Tewodros’ suicide in which the Emperor sits in his tent, off in the distance, and kills
himself by placing the revolver in his mouth (ﬁgure 6), Jembere has shown Tewodros in
a unique position, already lying down rather than standing, with the revolver pointed at
his temple.33 This introduced both his personal idea of the scene and those of
contemporary works. The anachronistic use of the Ethiopian ﬂag, which was not
introduced until the early years of the twentieth-century, wrapped around the torso of
Tewodros, also demonstrates Jembere’s innovative treatment of the theme, reﬂecting
more the time period in which Jembere lived rather than that of the Emperor’s suicide.34

One ﬁnal observation related to the Maqdela scene reﬂects yet another instance of
Jembere’s personal expression of the subject matter. Falling from the face of the plateau
are ﬁve ﬁgures, presumed to be Ethiopian because of their white clothes. Bound and

bloody, they are obviously adversaries of the Emperor. Their identity is not disclosed in

 

3' The placement of the slain Gabreye at the front line recalls representations of the Battle of Adwa, in
which Emperor Menelik’s famed warrior, Fitawrari Gabeyehu, is represented slain, in the same position
(i.e., at the front line).

32 This is an literal representation of the historical account in which Alemayehu and Teruwarq are present
when the British stormed the plateau.

33 According to Henry Stanley, a special correspondent for the New York Herald who accompanied the
British expedition and reported the Maqdela campaign, the revolver was inscribed. “Presented by Victoria,
Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, to Theodorus, Emperor of Abyssinia, as a slight token of her gratitude
for his kindness to her servant Plowden, 1854" (1874, 449).

59

either of the captions which read “prisoners thrown down from Maqdela amba” and
“avalanche of stones.” Insight into the possible identities of these ﬁgures is offered in an
account written by one of Tewodros’ European prisoners at Maqdela, Henry Blanc. In
providing an account of the mass executions which Tewodros ordered on April 9, just
three days before the Battle, Blanc (1970, 389) describes this particular scene in
Jembere’s painting:

As every prisoner was brought out he (Tewodros) inquired his name, his

country, and his crime. The greater part were found guilty, hurled over the

precipice, and shot below by musketeers sent there to despatch (sic) any

one who still showed signs of animation, as many had escaped with life

from the awful fall. Some 307 were put to death, and 91 were reserved for

another day. These last, strange to say were all chiefs of note; many of

whom had fought against the Emperor, and all, he knew, were his deadly

enemies.
Given the increasingly violent measures that Tewodros exercised in his ﬁnal years to
suppress rebellions and desertions, the exact identity of these prisoners is unknown. The
subject itself is found only in recent traditional themes, such as in the painting by
Berhanu Yimenu that dates to the 19805 (ﬁgure 9). The boulders which drop from the
plateau follow earlier, established interpretations of the subject. The inclusion of the
prisoners (rather than the soldiers as in ﬁgure 9) who fall from the amba alongside the
boulders, is unique.

In this section of the painting, Jembere’s choice of subjects and their
accompanying captions directly recount the most important historical ﬁgures or elements
of the composite theme. In the instance of the Battle of Maqdela, he chooses the most

signiﬁcant stages to summarize the scene: the march, the Battle of Aroge, and the

Emperor’s execution of his Ethiopian enemies, followed by his suicide before the British.

 

3“ See Chojnacki (1963, 60-61).

Jembere’s use of captions echo this iconographic approach by succinctly identifying the
scene.

The rendering of this scene in Marcos’ painting reveals a different interpretation.
A number of the same iconographic elements used by Jembere are noted but, as in the
previous discussions concerning his treatment of speciﬁc themes, Marcos depends less on
the immediate social perspective and conventional symbols, such as Fitawrari Gabreye or
the cannon, to draw attention to the most dramatic aspects of the subject. He instead
relies upon stylistic elements, such as perspective, to aid the viewer in distinguishing one
event from another, or line, to direct the viewer through the various subject areas and
action taking place within each.

Examining the different elements in this part of the painting, it is difﬁcult to
determine whether or not events occur successively or simultaneously. At the lower left
corner, a group of soldiers, easily identiﬁed as British because of their pith helmets, dark
uniforms and pale complexions, are separated from the surrounding action by a dark
contour line. In separating the soldiers from the surrounding activities with the contour
line, and positioning them in the immediate foreground, Marcos communicates that these
troops are marching at a lower elevation, and thus not directly engaged in an actual battle.
The caption corroborates this in stating “The British soldiers heading to Maqdela.”

To the right and beyond this framing contour line, a battle scene features the
British soldiers on the left and the Ethiopian soldiers on the right. The standard
identifying element in the Aroge battle scene, Fitawrari Gabreye, is not included. Missing
is Jembere’s sense of drama, such as the blood dripping from the swords or smoke

discharging from the riﬂes. The subtle contour line seen behind the Ethiopian troops, and

61

the positioning of the British troops marching down toward to a lower elevation at the
right, suggest that the conﬂict depicted could in fact be the Battle of Aroge at the foot of
the Maqdela amba. Yet, without a caption or speciﬁc symbols, this scene simply provides
a view of a battle.

More of Jembere’s inﬂuence can be noted in the iconography that Marcos
employs to render the execution of prisoners, suicide of Tewodros, and the amba assault.
The signature revolver and braided coiffure immediately identify the standing ﬁgure as
Tewodros. Unlike his father’s use of social perspective, Marcos accentuates the
Emperor’s importance by depicting him wearing an ornate, red robe. The symbolic blue
cannon is placed in a historically accurate position, at the edge of the plateau, but Marcos
renders it in a more naturalistic proportion and again, relies less upon its size to identify
the scene.

Following earlier representations, such as ﬁgures 3 and 5, and that of his father’s,
Marcos has included the diminutive ﬁgure of Alemayehu, the dramatically gesturing
Teruwarq, and other bereaved supporters. They stand above the crowned ﬁgure of
Tewodros, dressed in a blue robe, laid horizontally at their feet. The contrasting images
of Tewodros, alive and dead, side by side, is an iconographic component not encountered
in other examples studied by the author.

Speciﬁcally, Marcos has emulated the crown and royal attire featured in those
scenes (e.g., ﬁgures 3 and 5) in which Tewodros is depicted committing suicide alone,
separated from the chaos, aiming the revolver at his temple yet portrays the deceased
monarch dressed in the attire of someone who is still Emperor, wearing a crown and blue

robe. Lacking are the dramatic red lines of blood upon Tewodros’ face, as in his father’s

62

image of the Emperor, or the political icon of the Ethiopian ﬂag. Marcos has appropriated
those identifying symbols featured in earlier interpretations of Tewodros’ suicide and
combined them with a rendering similar to his father’s of the Emperor’s dead body at the
feet of his family and supporters.

Marcos has also offered visual clues in his portrayal of Tewodros in the act of
suicide before the British ofﬁcers. Depicting the two ofﬁcers wearing different hats than
each of the soldiers who climb the ladder, he suggests that this is Lord Napier and
perhaps a subordinate British ofﬁcer. The caption above conﬁrms this stating, “British
ofﬁcers saluting the corps.” However, Marcos has presented another interpretation of the
event, for according to various accounts, Napier and his troops arrived shortly after the
suicide of Tewodros, they did not, as Marcos has communicated, actually witness the
event as it took place.35 This speciﬁc interpretation echoes images of Tewodros’ suicide
dating to the later part of the twentieth-century such as ﬁgure 8, rather than earlier
representations in which he is seated alone in his tent.

Like Jembere, Marcos has depicted a number of presumably Ethiopian prisoners
falling from the face of the amba. Careful attention has been given to the gestures of each
as they descend through the air. He stresses the impact of their descent by emphasizing
facial expressions and the bloodied areas on their bodies. The caption, “thrown into the
valley” suggests that the rendering of this subject offers a more literal interpretation than
his father’s — the events described in Blanc’s message (1970, 389) where the survivors of

the fall were “shot below by musketeers sent there to dispatch any one who showed signs

 

35 Stanley (1867, 480) includes reference to such ladders in his account of the amba assault: . . an
entrance was forced by means of the ladders near the gate, and by the leading men of the 33'”, who scaled a
rock and turned the defences of the gateway. The enemy were driven to the second barricade, and when
that was carried all resistance ceased . . . Close to the second gateway lay the body of Tewodros."

63

of animation.” This area demonstrates Marcos’ concern with the more formal qualities of
this subject, such as the gestures of the prisoners who fall through the air, or the rendering
of the plateau base, and his selection of subjects to represent the theme.

The burning structures at the left of the composition recall a theme found in
earlier Maqdela renderings, such as ﬁgure 5. Marcos has added an additional element
however, by placing ﬁgures inside the blazing structures. This caption, which reads,
“dying ablaze,” provides no further information regarding the setting or the subject.
Situated in the distant Maqdela landscape, it may represent one of two different themes.
These structures could be the ancillary huts atop the Maqdela mount that were burned
because of their proximity to the targeted plateau. Such a representation is quite probable,
as a similar scene is reported by Myatt (1970, 161):

The guns opened ﬁre at about 15.00 and continued for an hour.

The ranges were rather long for accurate shooting but the top of the

Maqdala was about three-quarters of a mile long and half a mile

wide so that it was a difﬁcult target to miss completely and shells

were soon bursting among the hundreds of mat-huts covering the

amba.
Yet, Marcos has positioned this scene opposite the amba, removed from the general
activities. Considering his father’s rendering of different scenes that occurred at Maqdela
on different days, it is also possible that this is a brief reference to the extreme violence of
Tewodros in the ﬁnal months just before the Battle. Marcus (1997, 70) deﬁnes this period
as one “characterized by burning, looting, killing and more mass executions.” Again,
without the immediately recognizable symbols or captions such as those that his father

employs, it is difﬁcult to identify the exact event.

The black and yellow striped band framing all but one side of the scene suggests

that this may in fact be a subject Marcos wished not to directly relate to the Maqdela
theme. Studying the same colored band that surrounds other sections of the painting, this
does seem quite possible. Or, he may have included this scene as a reference to a speciﬁc
event that occurred many months before the Battle of Maqdela, such as during the later
part of 1867, when Tewodros and his remaining followers burnt Debre Tabor, looted
weapons, and “blasted a road to Maqdala” (Rubenson, 1966, 82).

Overall, this area of the composition in both paintings reﬂects that the
iconography and captions used by both artists to communicate the many themes about the
life of Tewodros are different. Jembere’s painting presents an immediate, abridged,
historical perspective. His captions identify the most important ﬁgures and subjects.
Little, if any, additional imagery is included as a background or setting. Marcos presents
a more literal perspective. He uses images and historical details that provide less
identiﬁcation and more description. Captions included in his painting do not immediately
identify lesser known subjects, nor do the iconographic details. Given these differences
and others that occur in other areas of the compositions, the question arises as to how
these iconographic variations and a different use of captions, combined with those
individual stylistic characteristics discussed in chapter four, ultimately reﬂect the

individual life history and training of both artists?

65

CONCLUSION

THEME & VARIATION: LIFE & ART

Scholars have, until recently, discounted the signiﬁcance of interpreting the life
and work of the individual artist in twentieth-century Ethiopian traditional painting.
Because their paintings are mostly produced for tourists and repeatedly feature popular
themes and subjects, little, if any, consideration has been given to the individual artist’s
relationship to the painting, its subject, or audience. This paper has demonstrated that
despite the popularity of certain themes, such as the Emperor Tewodros and the Battle of
Maqdela, traditional paintings reﬂect differences in style and iconography. Such
differences are tied to the life experiences and histories of the individual artist, their
patrons or markets, and the socio-cultural environment in which they live.

The stylistic and thematic inconsistencies in the work of Jembere and Marcos
discussed in this paper reveal differences in lives of father and son. Jembere’s painting
reﬂects both stylistic and iconographic conventions of the Orthodox church. His overtly
didactic interpretation of the Emperor Tewodros and the Battle of Maqdela reveals his
previous experiences as a church painter. As in mural paintings, the importance of the
key historical ﬁgures is clearly stated both visually, through the use of social perspective,
line, and gesture, and in text, through the use of captions. Overall, the various subject
areas in his compositions feature fewer ﬁgures and lack added architectural details or
depth-building features within the landscape, and consequently, seem more intimate and

focused on the event, very much like the mural paintings found in Ethiopian Orthodox

66

churches.

The artistic training Marcos received from his father, and the academic instruction
he received in school, are evident in his representation of Tewodros and Maqdela. His
rendering of ﬁgures, in addition to his use of decorative borders and colors, reﬂect the
inﬂuence of the Orthodox painting traditions conveyed through his father’s instruction.
His concern for formal, academic elements is recognized in his use of simple, depth-
building techniques and topographical features to establish an environment or setting to
each subject area. By using linear perspective, and other means for creating an illusion of
depth in the various subject areas in his compositions, such as simple overlapping or tree
lines, he reveals the formal instruction he received in school. Captions included in his
painting serve as narratives or title-like phrases to each subject area and differ in effect
when compared to those used by his father.

The individual life histories and experiences of the two painters become
increasingly more important as the iconographic inconsistencies between the two
paintings are noted. Both Jembere and Marcos draw upon the conventional iconographic
elements of established Tewodros themes, such as the scenes of punishment or amba
assault, but have also, in their own way, developed new interpretations of the subjects.
Jembere, for example, elects to represent Tewodros with the Abuna Salama, whereas
Marcos presents Tewodros seated at a table with a number of both religious and non-
religious advisors. Jembere includes the typical scenes of punishment to convey
Tewodros’ system of justice, but reinterprets each theme by adding precise historical
detail, as in the use of Wendyerad being forced to drink koso. Marcos demonstrates the

inﬂuence of both established views of punishment scenes and the iconographic

67

innovations of his father, such as the koso-drinking scene, but still asserts his own style
by framing each punishment scene with a decorative border, and using tree lines and
shrubbery to create an individual setting for each activity. Perhaps the most interesting
expression of each artist’s individuality is seen in their portrayal of the British siege of
Maqdela and the Emperor’s suicide.

Jembere and Marcos repeat the easily recognizable elements of the Maqdela
suicide theme. The British ofﬁcers saluting the Emperor and the mourning ﬁgures of
Alemayehu and Teruwarq directly reference conventional imagery used for the theme.
Yet, Jembere presents an extraordinary view of the subject by representing Tewodros
lying horizontally on the ground, pointing the revolver at his temple (rather than in his
mouth), wrapped anachronistically in the Ethiopian ﬂag. Prisoners, not just boulders,
tumble from the Maqdela mount.

Marcos also renders a distinct impression of the scene. He, too, includes the
conventional, identifying elements of the suicide theme, but creates a new impression of
the event by combining the familiar, standing ﬁgure of Tewodros, dressed in regal attire,
aiming the revolver at his temple, using his father’s convention of depicting the Emperor,
lying on his back, stretched horizontally at the feet of mourning onlookers. Asserting his
“own style,” he depicts the Emperor as deceased but still wearing a crown rather than
wrapped in the Ethiopian ﬂag.

If such stylistic differences exist due to differences in artistic training, what then
can be said about the different iconography that both artists have used in their paintings
of Tewodros and the Battle of Maqdela? As one of the most popular historical themes in

Ethiopia, the demise of Emperor Tewodros at the Battle of Maqdela and his system of

68

justice provide a particularly interesting opportunity for the question to be explored of
how the life experiences and the socio-cultural environment in which the artist lives
effects their interpretation of a subject as important as this one.

Jembere’s painting features fewer ﬁgures, presents a more immediate view of the
action, and includes identifying historical captions. Are his paintings more graphic due to
his life experiences as a soldier and the personal losses he experienced as a result of
political conﬂict? Was he personally identifying with Tewodros’ patriotism when he
painted the Emperor wrapped in the Ethiopian ﬂag, or did this have more to do with the
patron to whom or market in which he would sell the painting, or merely his interest in
creating a new interpretation of a popular theme? Has he included ﬁgures such as
Fitawrari Gabreye or Abuna Salama because of his admiration and identiﬁcation with the
patriotism of Gabreye’s sacriﬁce or the supreme authority of the Abuna Salama as a
representative of the Orthodox church? Why has he portrayed Tewodros in proﬁle — a
pictorial convention usually used to depict evil or bad characters in a painting?

Does Marcos offer a stronger narrative statement in his painting than his father
due to the modern, public education he received? Did he learn to present a more
descriptive interpretation rather than the more immediate, didactic-styled imagery that we
see in his father’s paintings? Did the long term inﬂuence of the Derg somehow effect the
Openness or immediacy of the images he selects when presenting a highly political topic,
such as Tewodros and his system of justice? Are his paintings more concerned with
formal elements and less with the expressive and dramatic, due to personal preference or
do they simply reﬂect the preferences of the market or patrons who purchase them?

Without additional information from the two painters or further research on the

69

history of twentieth-century traditional painting, it is difﬁcult to determine the exact
impetus for the stylistic and iconographic innovations identiﬁed in these two paintings.
Ideally, a detailed examination and comparison of various paintings portraying different
themes would provide a stronger basis for conclusions about the individual
interpretations and expressions in the works of Jembere and Marcos. However, in
demonstrating the signiﬁcant differences that do exist in the subject matter and style in
just two of their works portraying a common theme, this paper has refuted the
longstanding belief that paintings of this genre are mass produced, with little individual
creativity.

If noticeable differences in style and iconography exist between just two paintings
of the same subject painted by father and son, what is to be discovered upon studying two
that represent the same subject painted by two artists with radically different artistic
backgrounds, life experiences, or patrons? Additionally, what can be learned in analyzing
the style and subject matter used to portray speciﬁc themes over time? Studying speciﬁc
time periods in the twentieth-century when certain themes in traditional painting were
more popular than others might offer insights into the political, social, and economic
climate in which the individual artist lived. It may also tell us something about the
inﬂuence or role individual patrons played in the popularity of certain themes, painting
styles, and the genre as a whole.

Over the last 100 years, the individual traditional painter, until recently, has been
viewed as an anonymous producer of tourist art. The emergence of individual traditional
painters in twentieth-century Ethiopia has yet to be examined. Once biographies of

individual traditional painters are established, thematic studies concerning the popularity

70

or innovations in iconography might be developed. The history of the consumers or
destinations of traditional paintings might also be studied.

Other questions emerge. In terms of foreign patrons or markets, has the imagery
of particular traditional themes inﬂuenced or effected the perceptions foreigners maintain
of Ethiopia? For instance, did the popularity of certain militaristic themes fuel Western
visitors’ impression of Ethiopia as a “violent society.” If so, did this consequently effect
the manner in which EthiOpia has been depicted in Western media, such as maps, comics,
or newspapers and magazines? In terms of domestic patrons, what new genres of painting
have developed in Ethiopia since the rise in popularity of twentieth-century traditional
painting? What stylistic or iconographic inﬂuence has traditional painting exerted over
these new genres?

As valid expressions of life and society in Ethiopia, additional inquiries into the
styles and inﬂuences of individual artists not only lead to new interpretations of the

twentieth-century traditional painting, but to the history of Ethiopia and its people.

71

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72

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