Merryn Schriever
Managing Director, Australia
Lot 58
William Barak(1818-1903)Ceremony, 1897
Amended
7 June 2016, 18:30 AEST
Melbourne, ArmadaleSold for AU$512,400 inc. premium
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Alex Clark
Head of Sale, Senior Specialist
William Barak (1818-1903)
Ceremony, 1897
inscribed right hand margin: 'drawn by Barak/the last of the Yarra Tribe/Xmas 1897'
pencil, earth pigments, charcoal and ink on paper
41.5 x 54.0cm (16 5/16 x 21 1/4in).
inscribed right hand margin: 'drawn by Barak/the last of the Yarra Tribe/Xmas 1897'
pencil, earth pigments, charcoal and ink on paper
41.5 x 54.0cm (16 5/16 x 21 1/4in).
Footnotes
PROVENANCE
Frank Piggott Webb, Sydney
thence by descent
Appearing on the market for the first time, this exceptional work by one of the masters of late nineteenth century south-eastern Australia Aboriginal art, William Barak, possesses an impeccable provenance. According to the family oral history, Barak exchanged the drawing with the glass engraver Frank Piggott Webb (1859-1942) for one of his glass works. Webb had come to Australia from his family company in England, Thomas Webb & Sons, to demonstrate glass engraving at the company's stand in the Garden Palace during the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879-80. Webb lived in South Melbourne in the 1890s. The drawing has remained in the family ever since.
Drawings commissioned of Aboriginal artists by settlers in the late nineteenth century appear to depict generic scenes of ceremony, hunting and warfare - images of a way of life thought to be disappearing. However, William Barak is noted for images that relate to actual events or specific ceremonies.1 In this hierarchical composition Barak appears to be depicting an initiation ceremony in three distinct registers. The central section shows two squatting figures caught in mid-action; the dynamism of such a pose is typical of Barak's drawings. Judging by their beardless profiles, these two figures are initiates. To the left is a bearded elder who beats out a rhythm on a pair of clap sticks. The three figures wear possum skin cloaks, as do the four figures, again three of whom are likely to be young initiates, in the foreground; the figure on the right appears to be an elder who carries a spear and wears a lyrebird feather in his hair, a sign of rank. Typical of Barak's compositions, the ground of the painting is animated by the depiction of a variety of fauna interspersed amongst the human figures - lizards, an emu, kangaroos or wallabies and a bird that are likely to have totemic associations with the ritual performers. Along the left edge of the composition, Barak has drawn a man's tool kit, symbolic of manhood, consisting of a spear-thrower or club, a boomerang, a broad shield, a parrying shield and a spear, being further evidence that the scene is likely one of ritual initiation.
The upper register of the composition features a row of dancing men: five bearded elders carry parrying shields, spears, a leangle club and a boomerang. The smaller beardless figure, likely to be a young initiate, carries a club or stick and a broad shield. The men's torsos are adorned in painted designs and similar patterns decorate the faces of the shields; these would have been painted and etched into the surface of the wood. Barak seems to be making a connection between the body painting designs and those on the shields. Given that Barak was an expert shield-maker (two shields attributed to Barak carry designs of concentric diamonds; these are in the collections of the Museum of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia), it may be surprising that shields rarely appear in his drawings. Other drawings by Barak that feature broad or parrying shields include Ceremony, c.1880s, in the collection of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, and Fight scene, c.1880s, belonging to the Wurundjeri Aboriginal Co-operative (illustrated in Ryan et al, 2003, pp. 49 and 54 respectively), and Ceremony and Figures carrying spears: Figures being speared in the collection of the Staatliches Museum für Völkerdunde, Dresden.2
Wally Caruana
1 Judith Ryan, Carol Cooper and Joy Murphy-Wandin, Remembering Barak, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003
2 Andrew Sayers, Aboriginal Artists of the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1994
Saleroom notices
Please note this work is subject to the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986 and the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Regulations 1987, and that an export permit will be required by the purchaser.
