TAHITIAN FIGURE FROM A FLYWHISK |

Ralph Nash, London
Howard and Saretta Barnet, New York, acquired from the above on May 2, 1973

Very good condition overall for an object of this type and age. A few stable age cracks. Old losses to back of head and buttocks. Marks nicks scratches abrasions and wear consistent with age and handling. Exceptionally fine varied glossy medium brown patina.
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The attribution of objects from the Society Islands has long been the subject of some uncertainty. As David King notes, this difficulty arises in part because "communication and exchange among the Australs-Cooks-Societies probably started around the 15^th century, so objects collected on any particular island may or may not have been made there, or may have been made by people from another island living there."¹ Steven Hooper states that by the eighteenth century (if not before) specialist artists in the Austral Islands created "important ritual equipment for chiefs of the Society Islands."² Nor was the confusion helped by a tendency on the part of early English observers to attribute all objects from these Islands to "Otaheite", the beau ideal of the South Sea Islands in the imagination of the late eighteenth century. That this uncertainty has persisted is evident in the fact that when the Barnets acquired this sculpture from Ralph Nash it was described as a "Rarotonga Godstick". In fact, this important sculpture is, to our knowledge, the only example in private hands of the exceptionally rare corpus of Society Islands flywhisks which terminate in single anthropomorphic figures. In his study on the more abundant corpus of janiform flywhisks, Roger Rose notes that single figure flywhisks may be "regarded as the [type of] fly whisk used in the Society Islands at European contact."³ Flywhisks were not merely practical implements – although swarms of flies in Tahiti were much remarked upon by eighteenth century visitors – they served the role of family and household Gods, and were also symbols of rank which were brandished during oratory.

A firm attribution to the Society Islands, and more specifically to Tahiti, is supported by a comparison of the Barnet flywhisk with the wider corpus of firmly identified Tahitian sculpture, as well as with the smaller corpus of single figure flywhisks. Particularly characteristic of Tahitian sculpture are the squared shoulders, the concave back, the firm, lean jaw, and semi-circular ears. In the case of the Barnet flywhisk these features are executed with the definite confidence of the accomplished craftsman. The form of the ears flows effortlessly into the line of the jaw, and the outline of the sculpture is fluid and rhythmic, with parabolic forms arcing in contrast to strong, straight lines. The profile of the Barnet flywhisk recalls that of the double figure, probably from a canoe, in the British Museum (inv. no. Oc,TAH.60; see fig. 1).⁴ The straight, slightly furrowed brow is distinctive, as is the asymmetric position of the hands, which is unique within the corpus of flywhisks. These two traits impart a certain tenderness to the sculpture, and are reminiscent of the standing figure in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (inv. no. 1886.1.1424)⁵, collected by the naturalists Johann Reinhold and Georg Forster during Cook's second voyage in 1773-1774.

The known corpus of single figure flywhisks itself is so small that it can be easily enumerated here. While all fit within the same broad iconographical framework, representing a single human image with hands to the torso (with a single exception), there is considerable variety in the execution of individual details and, according to analysis carried out on some museum specimens, in the choice of wood.

The best documented examples are the two in the Cook/Forster Collection of the University of Göttingen. The first (inv. no. Oz 418),⁶ which retains its shaft, was acquired in 1782 from the naturalist, collector, and dealer George Humphrey (1739–1826). In his manuscript catalogue Humphrey described it as "the handle of a Fly-flap, made of wood, ornamented with a human figure rudely carved, supposed by some to represent an idol, from Otaheite."⁷ The second (inv. no. OZ 419) was collected by the Forsters, and acquired by Göttingen in 1799. Like the Barnet figure it clasps its hands to its chest in a particularly plaintive gesture; both sculptures also have a similar patina.

Three examples of unrecorded provenance are in the British Museum, London (see fig. 2).⁸ The first (inv no. Oc,TAH.137) is "complete", with the figure bound to a flat zigzag shaft "which may originally have been from [a] separate object".⁹ The second (inv. no. Oc,TAH.138) has a broken zigzag shaft which closely resembles in form the broken "handle" of a fly-whisk, collected during Cook's voyages, in the Weltmuseum, Vienna (inv. no. 145).¹⁰ The inventory number of the third is unknown. A "standing figure" (inv. no. Oc,LMS.98) in the museum, collected by a member of the London Missionary Society, is probably also a whisk handle; its hands are raised to its face in a gesture unique within the corpus.¹¹

Finally, an example identified as a "female deity", is in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington (inv. no. OL000370).¹² It was formerly in the collection of W. O. Oldman, who attributed it to "the Hervey Islands" (the southern Cook Islands) and noted that it "may possibly have been used as a whisk handle."¹³ It was collected in 1823 by George Bennet of the London Missionary Society.

To these we should add two untraced examples which are known only from their appearance in an engraving in Hawkesworth's account of Cook's first voyage,¹⁴ and from the original drawing by John Frederick Miller, now in the British Library, London (Add. Ms. 23,921.53); and another, illustrated in Parkinson's account of the first voyage, described as "A Fly-flap, the handle made of a hard brown wood, is thirteen inches long".¹⁵

Although no early provenance was noted when the Barnets acquired this extraordinarily rare flywhisk from Ralph Nash, the recorded history of other examples in the tiny corpus, together with similarities in style and execution, tend to support the attribution of the Barnet flywhisk to the eighteenth century.

¹ King, Missionaries and Idols in Polynesia, San Francisco, 2015, p. 142
² Hooper, Pacific Encounters: Art and Divinity in Polynesia, 1760 – 1860, London, 2006, p. 192
³ Rose in Mead, Exploring the Visual Art of Oceania: Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, Honolulu, 1979, p. 207
⁴ A fragmentary figure in the collection of the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin (inv. no. 1885.190) is identified as an "image from fly whisk or canoe" in Kaeppler, "Artificial Curiosities": an Exposition of Native Manufactures, Honolulu, 1977, p. 138, no. 3 & p. 142, figs. 246-247. It is almost certainly from a double-figure "canoe" carving, since it retains an upward reaching forearm below its right foot, and the remains of a projecting element from the buttocks.
⁵ Illustrated in Hooper, ibid., p. 173, cat. no. 124
⁶ Illustrated in Hauser-Schäublin and Krüger, James Cook. Gaben und Schätze aus der Südsee, Munich, 1998, p. 102, cat. nos. 41 and 42
⁷ Humphrey, Catalogue of Manufactures, Mechanical Performances, and other Inventions of the Natives of the New-discovered, or but Seldom Visited Countries in the Pacific Ocean etc., London, 1782, no. 198, cited in Hauser-Schäublin and Krüger, ibid., p. 286, cat. no. 41
8 Hooper, ibid., p. 175, notes that they are registered in the museum "with material of known eighteenth-century provenance."
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Illustrated in Kaeppler, ibid., p. 225, fig. 465
¹¹ Illustrated in Hooper, ibid., p. 176, cat. no. 128
¹² Illustrated in Oldman, 'The Oldman Collection of Polynesian Artifacts', Memoirs of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 15, 1943, pl. 9, cat. no. 370, and in King, Missionaries and Idols in Polynesia, London, 2015, p. 139, cat. no. 2.28
¹³ Ibid., p. 6 
¹⁴ Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere […], London, 1773, pl. XII
¹⁵ Parkinson, A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, in His Majesty's Ship, the Endeavour, London, 1773, pl. XIII; p. 76 for the description