Adventurer, Academic, Industrialist: Louis Pierre Ledoux 1936 New Guinea Expedition
In early 1936, on recommendation by American anthropologist Margaret Mead, Louis Pierre Ledoux, recent Harvard University graduate, headed to the lower eastern Sepik River of Papua New Guinea to study the Murik people.
The results of his self-funded expedition is an extraordinary collection of hundreds of artifacts, photographs, manuscripts, diaries, and letters left untouched for 85 years.
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LOT 180:
Double Figure, Lower Sepik
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Sold for: $110,000
Start price:
$
2,000
Estimated price :
$4,000 - $6,000
Buyer's Premium: 28%
More details
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Double Figure, Lower Sepik
Lower Sepik River Figure, double figure. Rare. Main figure with mask-like face and large slanted, oval stylized eyes, and smaller figure at below with similar stylized, oval, slanted eyes. Could possibly be a birthing figure.
According to the 2015 Myth + Magic, Art of the Sepik River exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, small female images are unusual in the lower Sepik region. Whether this is a women's initiation rite figure or not is unclear, but Myth + Magic explains: "[female image] ... connected to women's initiation rites and represents a spirit being or ancestral spirit that gives power, has the ability to foretell and divine the future, ease a difficult pregnancy and determine the sex of unborn babies, as well as assisting in love magic. Young female initiates sleep nearby to them and they are kept for in small baskets in the rafters of their owner's house. The figures often require the attentions of their owners. if they are ignored they have the power to inflict minor illness upon members of the household." https://nga.gov.au/exhibition/MythMagic/Default.cfm?IRN=243773&MnuID=3&ViewID=2
Locale: Murik Lakes, Lower Sepik River
Country: Papua New Guinea
Date: 1936 or earlier
Material: Wood
Dimensions: H 11" / 28 cm
Technique: Carved
Provenance: Louis Pierre Ledoux Collection
