Senegalese Sufi Devotional Imagery (Souwère Glass Painting and Amadou Bamba Portraits)

• Base every portrait of Amadou Bamba on the 1913 photograph: one frontal, standing figure in a white robe with a white wrap over the head, the face half lost in shadow, set at the centre of the panel. Reserve strict central symmetry for the saint's portrait; let Al-Buraq, miracles and battles run across the panel in profile.
• Paint on the back of the glass in reverse order: signature, black outlines and details first, then flat fields of colour, and the background last, so the image reads smooth and shiny through the pane, with little modelling; dot patterns over garments, wings and saddle cloths, and skies blended into a pale ground.
• Tell the saints' lives as stations, such as Bamba praying on the water among fish while colonial officials watch from a ship, alongside Al-Buraq, the Kaaba, the Battle of Badr and portraits of other marabouts, and set the saint with his attributes: prayer beads, the Qur'an, the minaret of the Great Mosque of Touba, the lion he calmed.
• Show the Prophet only through his signs, such as Al-Buraq or the Kaaba, never by a face.
• Join the figures to writing: healing verses, names of God and the names of the saints, so that image and text work together as a prayer.
• Repeat the same icon at every scale and on every surface, from glass and wall to bus, shopfront and photocopy, and hang it at doorways and thresholds.

Senegal's cities, chiefly Dakar and Saint-Louis, with Diourbel and Touba as centres of Mouride devotion. Reverse painting on glass came from the Maghreb and the Middle East at the end of the nineteenth or start of the twentieth century (sources differ), carried by Arab and Berber merchants, marabouts and Senegalese scholars back from pilgrimage; the Brooklyn Museum states that it had developed in Senegal's cities by 1900 and that the French colonial government banned it in 1908. It first showed the epic of Islam and its saints, then the leaders of the Sufi brotherhoods and of resistance to colonial rule, alongside scenes of daily life, to which painters added a new secular repertoire around independence in the 1960s. A photograph of Sheikh Amadou Bamba (1853–1927), founder of the Mouride order, taken in 1913 while he was under house arrest in Diourbel and published in a book by Paul Marty in 1917, became the model for his portraits on glass, walls, vehicles, banners and prints; in the late 1980s the Set Setal youth movement, with the muralist Papisto Boy (Pape Mamadou Samb), painted Dakar's walls with Sufi and popular imagery.

1. https://fowler.ucla.edu/exhibitions/a-saint-in-the-city-sufi-arts-of-urban-senegal/ (Fowler Museum, UCLA: A Saint in the City, 2003, curated by Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts; Amadou Bamba 1853–1927, founder of the Mouride Way; only one photograph of him exists, taken in 1913 under colonial house arrest; murals, signs, popular paintings, glass paintings, calligraphy with healing verses, lithographs, posters, silk-screened banners, plaster plaques, photocopies; Papisto a leading figure of the late-1980s youth movement Set-Setal, inspired by a Youssou N'Dour song; glass paintings of shared Abrahamic stories)
2. https://aodl.org/westafrica/passport.php/ (Passport to Paradise, Allen F. and Mary Nooter Roberts, MSU African Online Digital Library: the 1913 photograph taken under house arrest in Diourbel, first published in a book in 1917, in the same volume by Paul Marty as the photograph of Ibra Fall; images on car windshields, shops and homes, beside doorways and thresholds; Mor Gueye, Baye Fall and dean of Senegalese glass painting; Bamba praying on the water with colonial officials on a ship; Assane Dione's banner over the minaret of Touba; a Qur'an added in Bamba's hand; three-dimensional images of the Saint are forbidden; Papisto Boy (Pape Mamadou Samb) murals in Bel-Air, 1996–2001, and the late-1980s SET movement)
3. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_2004.52.21_Al-Buraq.jpg (Brooklyn Museum record and label for Gora Mbengue, Al-Buraq, 1975, 34.3 x 48.9 cm, Gift of Blake Robinson, signed M'Beingue: Mbengue a member of the Tijaan (Tijaniyya) devoted to al-Hajj Malick Sy; Al-Buraq, on which the Prophet made his night journey, also an emblem of business success; reverse glass painting (souwère) had developed by 1900 in Senegal's cities and was banned by the French colonial government in 1908)
4. https://www.si.edu/object/sheikh-amadou-bamba%3Anmafa_2002-14-19 (Smithsonian National Museum of African Art record, read through a search index because the page blocks automated fetches: Gora Mbengue, 1931–1988, reverse glass painting of Sheikh Amadou Bamba with prayer beads against a yellow sky; provenance Charleton E. Williams, Washington, to 2002)
5. https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/anth/?nb=E432871 (Smithsonian NMNH Anthropology, catalogue E432871-0, read through the collection search backend: 'Miracle of Amadu Bamba' by M. Lot, reverse glass painting, purchased by Craig Subler in 1991 in Sandaga market, Dakar; two people in the bow of a large ship point at Cheik Amadu Bamba in a white robe standing on the ocean, surrounded by three large fish; signed lower right; 33.66 x 24.76 cm)
6. https://spencerart.ku.edu/art/collections-online/object/42243 (Spencer Museum of Art: Mor Gueye, born circa 1925, Amadou Bamba calming the lion in the desert, 1999, reverse painting on glass, 2009.0010; label: a devout Baye Fall who paints events from Bamba's life at his studio in Dakar)
7. https://spencerart.ku.edu/art/collections-online/artist/23970 (Spencer Museum of Art artist record: Mor Gueye, born circa 1925, active in Senegal)
8. https://lepetitjournal.com/dakar/la-famille-gueye-la-peinture-sous-verre-dans-le-sang-255090 (Laure Solé, 'La famille Gueye : la peinture sous verre dans le sang', Le Petit Journal Dakar, 15 April 2019, updated 6 January 2021: Mor Gueye died in 2016 aged 95)
9. https://vitromusee.ch/en/regards-du-senegal-souwer-de-la-collection-afric-art-2/ (Vitromusée Romont, Regards du Sénégal, 17 March–29 September 2024: souwèr (also suwer), introduced from the Maghreb and the Middle East at the end of the nineteenth century by Arab and Berber merchants, marabouts and returning scholars; anonymous painters, the epic of Islam and saints, then the Muslim brotherhoods and resistance to colonisation; secular themes from the 1960s; Azou Bade of Saint-Louis)
10. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peinture_sous_verre_du_S%C3%A9n%C3%A9gal (introduced to the Maghreb around 1890 via Italy and Turkey and to Senegal at the start of the twentieth century; Wolof suweer or souwèr; painted on window glass in reverse order, signature and details first, outlines in gouache, then the enclosed areas and backgrounds; the glass gives a smooth, shiny finish; bibliography including Bouttiaux-Ndiaye 1994, Roberts and Roberts 2003, Renaudeau and Strobel 1984)
11. https://au-senegal.com/les-peintures-sous-verre-art-populaire-du-senegal,066.html (Au Sénégal: suwer in Wolof; the first glass paintings told the epic of Islam with battles, the Prophet's disciples and holy men; in Senegal the figures of the brotherhoods and of resistance, such as Amadou Bamba, El Hadj Malick Sy, Limamou Laye and Lat Dior; later family and neighbourhood scenes, portraits and bestiaries)
12. https://www.piasa.fr/en/news/suwer-senegal-2023 (Piasa, Suwer Senegal sale 2023: religious iconography at the end of the nineteenth century, then everyday scenes; Gora M'Bengue 1931–1988, Babacar Lô, Mor Gueye, Djibril Fall Diene, Fallou Dolly; The Kaaba, anonymous, 1950; Renaudeau collection and the 1984 Dakar exhibition Peinture sous verre du Sénégal)
13. https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/public/collection/v1/objects/914913 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Islamic Art: Battle of Badr, Senegal, possibly 1920s, paint on glass, 58 x 98 cm, 2025.479; also objects 914914, Portrait of a Marabout with Decorations, 2025.480, and 914915, Portrait of El-Hajj Malik Sy with Umbrella, 1940s–1960s, 2025.481)
14. https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780930741938 (review of Roberts and Roberts, A Saint in the City, 2003: the surviving photograph of about 1913 shows Bamba in a white long-sleeved robe with a loose white wrap across his head, his features split between shadow and light; reproduced in devotional murals, textiles and glass; Papisto Boy quoted)
15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Bamba (1853–1927; founded the Mouride brotherhood in 1883; exiled to Gabon 1895–1902 and Mauritania 1903–1907; house arrest in Diourbel; his photographs reproduced in paintings on walls, buses and taxis all over Senegal)
16. https://afrique.le360.ma/senegal/societe/2016/12/09/8192-senegal-un-imam-lynche-pour-avoir-critique-le-maouloud-8192 (Le360 Afrique, 9 December 2016: the imam of an 'ibadou' (Wahhabi) mosque in Dakar publicly criticised the Gamou; through Saudi influence, imams of the rigorist Wahhabi current increasingly criticise brotherhood practices)
17. Smithsonian Libraries African Art Index records (via the Smithsonian Open Access API): Papisto Boy, 1951–2014; Allen F. and Mary Nooter Roberts, 'Stations in a life: glass painting as visual hagiography' (2003) and 'Painting like prayers: the hidden side of Senegalese reverse-glass image/texts' (2000); Lucette Albaret and Michel Renaudeau, Peintures populaires du Sénégal: souweres (Paris: ADEIAO and Musée national des arts africains et océaniens, 20 May–14 September 1987, Cahiers de l'ADEIAO 4; catalogue record https://www.cageweb.be/catalog/cgw01:000812174)
18. Anne-Marie Bouttiaux-Ndiaye, Senegal Behind Glass: Images of Religious and Daily Life (Prestel with the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, 1994)
19. Allen F. Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts, with Gassia Armenian and Ousmane Gueye, A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2003)

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