Edwin and Cherie Silver, Los Angeles, acquired in 1971

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Riders of Power in African Sculpture, November 23, 1983 - May 6, 1984
The Museum for African Art, New York, Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa and the African Americas, September 22, 1993 - February 19, 1994

William Fagg and Margaret Plass, African Sculpture: an Anthology, London, 1964, p. 92 (in situ photograph)
William Fagg, African Tribal Images: the Katherine White Reswick Collection, Cleveland, 1968, unpaginated, accompanying cat. no. 125 (in situ photograph)
William Fagg and Margaret Plass, African Sculpture: an Anthology, London, 1973 (reprint), cover and p. 92
Herbert M. Cole, Riders of Power in African Sculpture, Los Angeles, 1983, p. 23, cat. no. 10 (listed)
Robert Farris Thompson, Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa and the African Americas, New York, 1993, p. 321, cat. no. 17

In Yoruba palace architecture, richly carved posts are incorporated into open-air verandas in courtyards, audience chambers, and façades, portraying elaborate stacked compositions of idealized characters of admirable virtues. Royal palaces were ambitious in scale and scope, and carvers received major commissions for such projects. These carvers often learned in family ateliers, with distinct styles developed over generations. The most distinguished individual carvers achieved great fame.  According to the great historian of Nigerian art William Fagg, former keeper of Anthropology at the British Museum, "the fuller forms typical of most Yoruba carving are evident in the work of a master from Efon-Alaye, one of the greatest centers of carving nearly in the center of Yorubaland. This great artist’s name was Agbonbiofe.  He was one of a famous family of carvers and makers of beaded crowns for the kings of Yorubaland, the Adeshina family" (Fagg, in Biebuyck. ed., Tradition and Creativity in Tribal Art, 1969, p. 54).

Fagg records that Agbonbiofe and his atelier received a commission for the sculptural elements of the royal palace of Efon-Alaye, which they executed in 1916. The posts he created depict "the two typical subjects in Yoruba house posts, a scene depicting a mother with one or more children [… and] the mounted warrior, or Jagunjagun as he is called in Yoruba. These carvings do not represent gods or earth mothers or anything like that; they are simply generalized representations of warriors and of mothers with children. Agbonbiofe’s work is representative of the best in the typical style of Efon carving” (ibid.).

Fagg visited the palace at Efon-Alaye in 1958, and photographed the present post in situ. Publishing this photo in 1968, Fagg stated: "This photograph, which I took in the palace at Efon-Alaye in 1958, demonstrates the architectural function of these posts in the massive mud palaces of old Yorubaland. This is one of the best of the posts carved by Agbonbiofe in 1916 for the then Alaye (King) of Efon." (Fagg, African Tribal Images, 1968, text to cat. no. 125).