■ MASK, MALANGAN MASK NEW IRELAND, PAPUA NEW GUINEA Height:... Lot 42

■ MASK, MALANGAN MASK NEW IRELAND, PAPUA NEW GUINEA Height: 101.5 cm. (60 in.) US$76,000-110,000 PROVENANCE Acquired in situ by Emma Eliza Coe known as "Queen Emma of New Guinea" (1850- 1913), New Ireland, in the 1880s Emma Eliza Coe Collection, Monte Carlo David F. Rosenthal, San Francisco Private American collection, acquired from the latter "The masks for the lifting of taboos are intended to repair society. They are large wooden masks often topped by an imposing superstructure [...] which are used to lift taboos remaining in a village after a death; they are also the ones that open the cemetery to admit the population to the festive sequence of Malagan commemorative ceremonies. ...] Members of the clan of the deceased can now return to normal life, and the mask that removes taboos is placed in its own display house , located in the public part of the cemetery. "(Gunn, M., in Gunn, M. and Peltier, P., New Ireland. Arts du Pacifque Sud, Paris, 2007, p. 251). Cf. the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin has several comparable masks, collected around the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, and reproduced in Helfrich, K., Malanggan - 1. Bildwerke von Neuirland, Berlin, 1973, fgs. 66-72. For another similar mask, see that in the collections of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Dresden, inv. no. I2073, acquired by Richard Parkinson in 1895 and reproduced in Gunn, M. and Peltier, P., New Ireland. Arts du Pacifque Sud, Paris, 2007, p. 258, No. 114). Emma Eliza Coe, a member of a noble Samoan lineage, adventurous princess, sister-in-law of Richard Parkinson and above all a businesswoman, whose phenomenal entrepreneurial success earned her the title of "Queen of New Guinea", making her one of the richest women in the Pacific, Emma Coe is undoubtedly one of the most emblematic and fascinating women's fgures of the 19th century. To bid, please visit the "Sale Inf