B.C. aboriginal mask sells for $150,000 in Paris
An elaborately carved aboriginal mask from Canada, believed to have been used in coming-of-age rituals among the Tsimshian people of the B.C. coast, has been sold at a Paris auction of historic native art for more than $150,000.
The exquisite object was part of a major collection of artifacts amassed by Bernard Bottet, a well-known French enthusiast for indigenous artwork who began acquiring treasures from around the world in the 1920s.
While the specific history of the Canadian mask was not immediately available, native art curators at Christie's auction house called it a "perfect" representation of Tsimshian style: "forehead tilted from eyebrows, sharp orbits, pyramidal cheeks, wide mouth with the fine lips, aquiline nose, round nostrils and finely sculptured ears."
The mask, which drew a top bid of $148,000 at Tuesday's auction in Paris, was expected to sell for about $100,000.
The Tsimshian First Nation is centred in B.C.'s Skeena River region, near the coastal port of Prince Rupert.
The nation's masterful carvings, typically shaped from red cedar, are renowned among collectors of native art and frequently fetch stunning prices at auction.
In 2006, a Tsimshian shaman's mask from a controversial collection of B.C. artifacts acquired by a 19th-century Christian missionary sold at a Sotheby's auction in New York for more than $2 million.
The Dundas Collection had been the focus of a decades-long and occasionally bitter struggle between Canadian cultural officials, native leaders and the great-grandson of Rev. Robert Dundas, a Scottish clergyman who had secured hundreds of objects from the Tsimshian people when he led the establishment of a Christian mission at Metlakatla, B.C., in the 1860s.
B.C. native leaders had argued at the time of the 2006 sale that the objects — which they described as being "as significant to Canadian heritage as the Group of Seven" — were acquired improperly by Dundas and should have been returned to the Tsimshian people.
The mask sold on Tuesday would have been on display "during complex ceremonies where a group of supernatural entities called naxnox was performing," Christie's stated in its sale catalogue.
"This type of mask is carved by dedicated artists called gitsonk, who are not only achieved carvers but also true geniuses of the ritual dramatization in which the powers of the naxnox are transmitted to the young initiates."
