Baboon, approx. 1900, Joseph Mendes da Costa, stoneware, Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics (on loan from Ottema-Kingma Stichting).
Sculptor Joseph Mendes da Costa (1863 – 1939) from Amsterdam belonged to the ‘animaliers’, a group of artists who wanted to portray the behaviour of wild animals. Some of them had their own studio in Artis, the zoo of Amsterdam. Mendes is best known for his ‘human’ looking monkeys. His realistic style fits in with that of the early 20th century. From the 1920s onwards, the sculptures became tighter and simpler.