Ernest Wauchope 107 McGregor, before beginning their trip back downriver toward the ocean (Coiffi er 2014: 136). THE DISPOSITION OF THE OBJECTS IN THE VAN DEN BROEK PHOTOGRAPH If Pacifi c arts specialist Douglas Newton discerned the whereabouts of the objects appearing in the van den Broek photograph, which was preserved in the archives of the Musée de l’Homme (now those of the Musée du Quai Branly), no published record of that research exists, as far as we know. In a letter addressed to the secretary of the Australian Museum in June of 1935,11 Wauchope expresses regret at not having been allowed to collect overmodeled human skulls and mentions that a Dane had acquired several of them in the last few months.12 He adds that a German missionary, Father Kirschbaum, had put together a huge collection of them for German museums over a period of twenty years. He concludes the letter by indicating that he had “secured” some very beautiful and old specimens, including large fi gures from the men’s houses and a sacred fl ute. An undated photo by Sarah Chinnery (Fortune 1998: 145) shows a number of pieces Wauchope collected: pottery from Aibom and Biwat area objects, including masks and hooks. In his next letter,13 which he probably wrote in Angoram on the banks of the Sepik River, Wauchope announces that he had sent a collection of ethnographic objects from the Middle and especially the Lower Sepik areas, aboard a ship called the Montoro. A transit document from the Rudder Ltd. company confi rms that this shipment was made to Sydney from the port of Madang.14 It probably included the objects seen in the photograph, but no inventory of it has been found in the archives. The man in white on the left side of the van den Broek photo is clearly Ernest Wauchope. On the ground, the anchor cable from his ship, the Balongot, is clearly visible amid the impressive array of objects. To facilitate fi nding each of the works mentioned in this article, we assigned numbers to each of about twenty pieces visible in the image (fi g. 3). Some of the smaller pieces arranged in the grass are not identifi able; however, the accession cards of the Australian Museum’s inventory have enabled us to identify at least ten pieces in the photo. We also had the opportunity to examine them in the course of a visit to the museum’s storage in 2007 (fi gs. 6a–b). Three of the sculptures (Australian Museum E.46 360, E.46 361, and E.46 362) were reproduced on the front cover of an Australian Museum catalog titled Pieces of Paradise (fi g. 5). The captions state they were acquired by the museum in 1938 but don’t mention the collector’s name. It is fairly diffi cult to identify these works in the photograph, but certain details match. The largest of the pieces (fi g. 3, no. 5) is 131 centimeters high and was collected in Dimiri.15 Now E.46 362 in the Australian Museum, it is a representation of a young pubescent woman seated on a base of four truncated and stacked conical elements. According to the museum’s inventory card, it would have been placed inside a house where women remained confi ned for the duration of their menstrual cycles. A gugu mask (fi g. 3, no. 6) from the village of Andua that has a large piece of netting attached to the back of it sits atop the head of the Dimiri sculpture, altering its appearance in the photo. This mask (E.46 315, fi g. 7) is most likely also illustrated in Pieces of Paradise (Specht 1988: 4–5). Wauchope collected two other tumbai dance masks (E. 46 313, fi g. 8; and E. 46 314, fi g. 9) in Anduar area villages, including Sapalu. The other two works illustrated on the catalog cover are only partially visible in the van den Broek photograph, but certain details leave no doubt about their identifi cation. The one in the background (fi g. 3, no. 13) comes from a Biwat village (E. 46360, fi g. 10). It is a representation of a man standing on a base made up of two superposed truncated conical elements. The fi gure was intended to ensure success in hunting or fi shing or a good yam harvest. The third sculpture (fi g. 3, FIG. 5 (above): Cover of the catalog for the 1998 exhibition Pieces of Paradise, edited by J. Specht. Cover images are sculptures in the Australian Museum, nos. E.46.362, E.46.360, E.4.6361. Reproduced by permission of the Australian Museum. All of the objects reproduced in this article are from the Biwat region, Yuat River, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. LEFT FIGS. 6a and b: Sculptures E.87 395 (top, not collected by Wauchope), E.46 364 (left), and E.46 362 (right), photographed in storage at the Australian Museum. Authors photos taken during a research visit to the Australian Museum in 2007.
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