But campaigners insist that the rare artefact instead should be returned to Gabon, in a case that has raised questions over Africa’s cultural heritage looted by colonial France.
The unnamed couple, 88 and 81, who live in Eure-et-Loir, south-west of Paris, had decided to sell their holiday home in Gard, southern France, but needed to clear out bric-a-brac from the attic.
They contacted a secondhand goods trader who bought several objects including the wooden sculpted mask, which had been gathering dust in the loft.
The auction catalogue explained how the mask had been obtained by the man’s relative, “collected around 1917, in unknown circumstances by the French colonial governor René-Victor Edward Maurice Fournier (1873-1931), probably during a tour in Gabon”.
A court in Alès on Tuesday heard the case of the retired couple, whose lawyers argued that they should rightfully receive the profits from the auction after handing over the mask to the bric-a-brac dealer for the unfair price of €150.
“One has to be in good faith and honest; my clients would never have given up this mask at that price if they knew it was an extremely rare object,” their lawyer, Frédéric Mansat Jaffré, told French media this month.
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