Bamidele Areogun appears in one of the most revealing photographic records of twentieth-century Yoruba carving. In 1974, American scholar and photographer John Pemberton III photographed him in Ekiti beside another man and an Epa sculpture carved by Bamidele himself. The image is preserved in the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art.
Bamidele’s significance extends far beyond the photograph. He was the son of the celebrated master carver Dada Areogun of Osi-Ilorin and later became associated with the Catholic carving workshop at Oye-Ekiti. He also trained Lamidi Olonade Fakeye, who would become one of Nigeria’s best-known twentieth-century woodcarvers.
His life connects several important strands of Yoruba art history: family tradition, professional apprenticeship, indigenous religious sculpture, Christian commissions and the transmission of carving knowledge into a new generation.
Bamidele Areogun and the Osi-Ilorin Carving Tradition
Bamidele emerged from an exceptionally important artistic environment.
His father, Dada Areogun, was born around 1880 at Osi-Ilorin and became one of the most distinguished Yoruba woodcarvers associated with the Opin and northern Ekiti carving tradition. He was particularly admired for architectural sculpture, including carved doors, house posts and relief panels, although he also produced smaller figurative works.
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Areogun’s artistic achievement was built upon a lengthy professional apprenticeship. He trained for about sixteen years under Bamgbose of Osi-Ilorin, an established carver, and later continued his training under Fisan of Isare.
These relationships reflected the wider importance of apprenticeship within Yoruba carving. Young artists learned through observation, disciplined practice and participation in workshops where established masters transmitted technical knowledge and artistic conventions.
Osi-Ilorin itself occupies an interesting place in the cultural geography of Yoruba art. Although it lies in present-day Kwara State, it was historically connected with the wider northern Ekiti artistic environment. Cultural and artistic networks in the region long predated Nigeria’s later state boundaries.
This was the world into which Bamidele was born.
Bamidele Areogun and the 1974 Photograph
In 1974, John Pemberton III photographed Bamidele with another man and an Epa sculpture carved by Bamidele himself.
The photograph is catalogued as Bamidele Areogun and friend with Epa sculpture carved by Bamidele Areogun.
Other photographs taken by Pemberton during the same period show Bamidele’s working environment, his compound and additional carvings associated with churches and domestic settings.
The surviving images provide a valuable visual record of an artist working within a living Yoruba carving tradition during the twentieth century.
They also show the breadth of Bamidele’s artistic world. His career crossed the boundaries between indigenous sculpture and Christian patronage, reflecting the changing circumstances in which Yoruba craftsmen worked during the colonial and post-colonial periods.
Bamidele Areogun and the Epa Sculpture Tradition
The sculpture beside Bamidele in the 1974 photograph belonged to the Epa tradition, one of the most visually imposing sculptural traditions associated with northern Ekiti Yoruba communities.
Epa masks typically consist of a helmet-like base supporting a substantial carved superstructure. These upper sections may contain multiple figures and can represent women, warriors, rulers, children, musicians or other socially significant subjects.
Their monumental appearance is closely connected with performance.
Epa sculptures formed part of festivals in which carving was combined with costume, movement, music and community participation. The physical scale of the masks contributed to their visual and ceremonial impact.
The photograph of Bamidele beside his Epa sculpture therefore places him directly within a longstanding Yoruba sculptural tradition that remained active into the twentieth century.
Apprenticeship Beyond Father and Son
Although Bamidele was the son of Dada Areogun, his artistic development reflected the broader workshop system through which Yoruba carving skills were transmitted.
Bamidele’s formal training has been associated with Osamuko, another carver connected with the artistic network surrounding Dada Areogun.
This illustrates an important feature of Yoruba apprenticeship.
Skills did not necessarily move only from biological father to son. Young craftsmen could train under other recognised masters, allowing techniques and styles to circulate across families and communities.
Bamidele therefore grew up within a prestigious carving lineage while also developing through a wider professional network.
That system allowed regional artistic traditions to continue across generations without becoming completely fixed. Each artist inherited established techniques but could also respond to new patrons, subjects and personal artistic choices.
Bamidele Areogun and the Oye-Ekiti Catholic Workshop
Bamidele’s career later became closely connected with one of the most important experiments in twentieth-century Nigerian Christian art.
In 1947, Catholic missionary Father Kevin Carroll was posted to Oye-Ekiti. The Catholic mission there became involved in a programme that encouraged Yoruba artists to create Christian works through indigenous carving traditions rather than simply reproducing European religious imagery.
The project developed within a broader Catholic initiative involving figures including Father Patrick Kelly and Kevin Carroll.
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Bamidele, who also appears in historical records as Bandele and George Bamidele Arowoogun, became a leading artist associated with the Oye-Ekiti workshop.
Christian subjects were produced through carving techniques already familiar within Yoruba artistic practice.
Biblical figures, church doors, Nativity scenes and other religious commissions could therefore be expressed through forms and methods rooted in local workshop traditions.
The result was not simply European religious imagery made in Nigeria. Yoruba craftsmen adapted Christian subject matter through an artistic vocabulary they had inherited and developed within their own communities.
Dada Areogun and Christian Patronage
The Oye-Ekiti environment also brought Catholic patrons into contact with Dada Areogun.
Although Areogun belonged to an older generation of Yoruba carvers deeply connected with indigenous artistic traditions, he accepted commissions for Christian settings.
Among works associated with this period were carved representations of the Wise Men from the East for a Nativity composition.
Such commissions reflected the changing pattern of patronage available to Yoruba craftsmen in the twentieth century.
Christian churches increasingly became new patrons of local artistic skill, while carvers continued to draw upon techniques, forms and workshop practices inherited from earlier generations.
This interaction between older carving traditions and new religious commissions became one of the defining features of the Oye-Ekiti artistic experiment.
Bamidele Areogun and Lamidi Fakeye
One of Bamidele’s most important contributions to later Nigerian art came through his role as a teacher.
Among the artists who trained under him was Lamidi Olonade Fakeye.
Fakeye came from a family with its own carving tradition and had already encountered woodcarving before entering the Oye-Ekiti artistic environment. He later undertook an important period of apprenticeship under George Bamidele Arowoogun at the Catholic workshop.
The training helped develop Fakeye’s skills before he embarked on the independent career that would eventually make him one of Nigeria’s most internationally recognised woodcarvers.
Fakeye worked for patrons requesting Christian, traditional and secular subjects. He travelled internationally, demonstrated carving outside Nigeria and later became associated with academic life at Ife.
His sculptures entered museum collections and exhibitions around the world.
Bamidele therefore occupies an important position between two major generations of Yoruba craftsmen: the earlier carving world represented by his father, Dada Areogun, and the later international career of Lamidi Fakeye.
A Yoruba Carving Tradition Across Generations
The artistic relationships surrounding Bamidele illustrate how Yoruba carving knowledge moved through generations.
Dada Areogun belonged to an established workshop tradition and received lengthy training from recognised masters. Bamidele grew up within that environment but developed through a wider apprenticeship network. Lamidi Fakeye later trained under Bamidele before building an independent career of his own.
Each generation worked under different historical conditions.
Areogun’s career developed in a world where indigenous religious, domestic and royal patronage remained especially important.
Bamidele lived through the expansion of Christian missions and new institutional forms of artistic patronage.
Fakeye later entered an era in which Nigerian artists increasingly engaged universities, museums, collectors and international exhibitions.
Despite these changes, the basic practice of learning from established craftsmen remained important.
From Indigenous Patronage to New Institutions
Bamidele lived during a period of profound transformation in Nigeria.
Colonial rule altered political and economic institutions. Christianity expanded across many Yoruba communities. Schools, churches, museums and international collectors created new sources of patronage.
Yet older artistic practices did not disappear immediately.
Yoruba craftsmen continued producing works connected with indigenous religious and social institutions while also responding to commissions from churches, scholars and collectors.
Bamidele’s career embodied this overlapping world.
The Epa sculpture photographed in 1974 associated him with a Yoruba performance tradition. His church carvings connected him with Christian patronage. His apprenticeship relationships placed him within an older professional system of artistic instruction.
These different elements existed together within the changing artistic environment of twentieth-century Yorubaland.
The Historical Importance of the 1974 Photograph
John Pemberton III’s photograph captures Bamidele at a significant point in this artistic history.
He stands beside an Epa sculpture attributed directly to him, linking a named craftsman with a specific work.
Behind Bamidele was the artistic inheritance represented by Dada Areogun and the wider Osi-Ilorin and northern Ekiti carving traditions.
Beyond him was another generation represented by Lamidi Fakeye.
The photograph therefore records one individual artist while also reflecting a wider history of artistic continuity.
It shows that Yoruba carving was not merely a body of old objects preserved in museums. It remained a living practice carried forward by working artists, workshops and apprentices.
Conclusion
Bamidele Areogun was more than the son of a celebrated Yoruba master carver. His career linked several important phases in the history of twentieth-century Yoruba sculpture.
He emerged from the Osi-Ilorin carving environment associated with Dada Areogun, developed within the wider apprenticeship network of Yoruba craftsmen, participated in the Catholic art movement centred on Oye-Ekiti and became an important teacher in the development of Lamidi Fakeye.
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His work also crossed boundaries between different systems of patronage.
The 1974 photograph of Bamidele beside his Epa sculpture preserves his association with an indigenous Yoruba performance tradition, while other surviving works connect him with Christian commissions.
Together, these strands reveal a carving tradition that continued through profound social and religious change.
The patrons changed. The institutions changed. Religious subjects expanded. Nigeria itself moved from colonial rule into independence.
Yet artistic knowledge continued to pass through workshops, families and apprentices.
The man photographed beside an Epa sculpture in 1974 therefore represents something larger than one artist and one object. Bamidele Areogun stood within a Yoruba artistic tradition whose influence reached backwards through generations of master carvers and forwards into the internationally recognised career of Lamidi Fakeye.
Author’s Note
Bamidele Areogun’s story shows how an artistic tradition can endure by adapting to changing circumstances. Yoruba carving continued because craftsmen learned from earlier masters while responding to new religions, patrons and institutions. The 1974 image of Bamidele beside his Epa sculpture captures that continuity in human form: an artist shaped by an inherited tradition who, through his own work and teaching, helped carry Yoruba carving into another generation.
References
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Bamidele Areogun and friend with Epa sculpture carved by Bamidele Areogun. John Pemberton III Collection, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, 1974.
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. John Pemberton III Collection, archival photographs relating to Bamidele Areogun, his compound, carvings and working environment.
British Museum. Biographical and collections records for Dada Areogun, including his career, apprenticeship and association with the Opin and northern Ekiti carving tradition.
Carroll, Kevin. Yoruba Religious Carving: Pagan & Christian Sculpture in Nigeria & Dahomey. Geoffrey Chapman, London; Praeger, New York, 1967.
Adejumo, Christopher O. “Pragmatism in Yoruba Art: Dada Areogun’s Narrative Woodcarving as Cultural Stewardship.” African Arts, Vol. 57, No. 2, 2024.
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Biographical and collection records for Lamidi Olonade Fakeye and his apprenticeship under George Bamidele Arowoogun at Oye-Ekiti.
