Ernest Wauchope on the banks of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea
Ernest Wauchope
Christian Coiffier
Honorary Attaché at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris
A photograph, taken in 1935 on the banks of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea by Charles van den Broek d'Obrenan, one of the members of the French expedition of La Korrigane, has made many collectors of Oceanic objects dream. In this photograph is a man dressed in white next to four Sepik men on the river bank in front of an impressive collection of statuettes from the Yuat River region. We were able to identify the man in white by comparing this photograph with other iconographic documents kept in the archives of the Australian Museum. This man is a planter, named Ernest Wauchope.
On September 23, 1935, near the administrative center of Angoram on the banks of the Sepik River, Ernest Wauchope unloaded his ethnographic objects recently collected in the villages of the Yuat River region (Archives of Charles-Noël van den Broek d’Obrenan).
Ernest John Luther Wauchope was part of the Australian Expeditionary Force (ANZAC) sent to Europe during the Great War of 1914-1918. At the age of 23, he embarked in Adelaide on 20 October 1914 as a mechanic on the Ascanius with his comrades in arms of the 10th battalion of Company F. A few years after his return to Australia on 15 February 1918 and his demobilization, he moved as a veteran to the former German colony of New Guinea (Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land), which had just been placed under Australian mandate under the Treaty of Versailles. In the 1930s, he and his wife Biddy managed the Awa plantation, located in the territory of the Awar, in Hansa Bay, not far from Bogia opposite the island of Manam on the north-east coast of New Guinea.
During the interwar period, the planter couple assisted various scientists passing through the region, such as C. B. Humphreys of Christ's College, Cambridge and Dr. Felix Speiser of the Basel Museum1. Ernest Wauchope maintained close relations with ethnologists such as Gregory Bateson and Camilla Wedgwood. At that time, she was an anthropology assistant at the University of Sydney and was conducting research on Manam Island. She therefore had the opportunity to frequent the couple of planters. Bateson, for his part, worked much further afield, upstream of the Sepik River, in the villages of Palimbeï and Kanganaman, but he could also benefit from the help of Ernest Wauchope during his field missions of 1929 and 1932 and he did not fail to thank him by name in the foreword to his famous work "Naven" (Bateson, 1971: 8). In 1936, Ernest Wauchope collaborated with Lord Moyne to build up a collection of objects from Lower Sepik and Ramu that is now in the British Museum (Howarth, 2015: 34).
The economic crisis of the 1930s, which saw the price of copra plummet, prompted the planter Wauchope to become a supplier of Sepik objects for various museums. The Pitt Rivers Museum has about thirty objects collected by Ernest Wauchope but included in the collection of Beatrice Blackwood. However, it is mainly for the Australian Museum in Sydney that he works. This institution has a substantial collection of various objects (sculptures, masks and paintings on the backbone of sago palms, etc.) collected by Ernest Wauchope as well as a documentation on the collector himself with his correspondence preserved in the museum's archives department. A note to the trustees of the Australian Museum states that it was Camilla Wedgwood who recommended Ernest Wauchope to the museum's administration2. In early 1935, the museum administration and trustees accepted a proposal through a Sydney law firm to recognize Wauchope as official collectors of the museum3. Other letters addressed to Ernest Wauchope, however, specify that the Australian administration forbade the collection of human skulls4.
The minutes of the Trustees' meetings of the period 1934-38 bear witness to the correspondence between Ernest Wauchope and the administration of the Australian Museum. We thus learn that a sum of 200 pounds was allocated to him for one of his collections5. In a letter6 addressed in June 1935 to the secretary of the Australian Museum, Ernest Wauchope, returning from a trip on the Sepik, regretted the ban on collecting over-modelled human skulls and pointed out that a Dane7 had acquired some of them in the last three months. He also points out that a German missionary, Father Franz Kirschbaum, had built up a vast collection for German museums over the past twenty years. He concludes this letter by indicating that he has "secured" some very beautiful ancient specimens, including large figures from men's houses as well as sacred flutes. In a subsequent letter8, probably written in Angoram on the banks of the Sepik, he mentions sending of a collection of ethnographic objects from the Middle Sepik and particularly from the Lower Sepik on the ship Montoro. A letter from the transit company Rudder Ltd confirms that Wauchope is sending a collection of ethnographic objects to Sydney from Madang Harbor9.
As far as the iconic image taken by Charles van den Broek d'Obrenan is concerned, the travel diaries of Sarah Chinnery10 (Fortune, 1998) and Monique de Ganay11 (Coiffier, 2014) allow us to reconstruct the events that preceded and followed it. On September 10, 1935, Wauchope and Sarah Chinnery dined in Angoram at the home of merchant Robert Overall with patrol officer Hamilton inside Gregory Bateson's large mosquito net12 (Fortune, 1998: 160-162). The next day, Sarah Chinnery joined the Wauchope couple on their boat Balangot to sail up the Keram River to the village of Kambot. They later travelled back down the river to sleep in the village of Alagunam on the banks of the Yuat River. The next day, they went up the river to the village of Kinakatem where Margaret Mead and Réo Fortune had worked three years prior, and they also visited the villages of Brenda and Dankar to buy objects (Fortune, 1998: 165-170).
On Monday, September 16, they continued upstream to the village of Bun and then the next day went back down to the Sepik River, making stops in the villages of Anduar and Yurma where the Wauchope couple made various purchases. A photo by Sarah Chinnery (Fortune, 1998: 145) shows some objects collected by the couple, in addition to pottery from Aïbom and several objects (masks and hooks) from the Biwat region. But Biddy Wauchope was ill and the couple decided to return to Angoram (Fortune, 1998: 171-173). On Friday, September 20, District Officer (kiap) Bloxham arrived in Angoram on the government ship Hermes, which was to travel the next day to Ambunti up the river. Sarah Chinnery took the opportunity to accompany Hamilton and Bob Overall on the Hermès (Fortune, 1998: 173).
Two days later, on 23 September, the members of the French expedition arrived in Angoram on the yacht La Korrigane. The government kiap Bloxham welcomed them (Van den Broek, 1939: 190) and later had them to dinner (Coiffier, 2014: 127). He introduced them to the Wauchope couple, who were then invited aboard La Korrigane. Wauchope gave the members of the French expedition four objects, including two flute stoppers that they had just acquired in Biwat villages, as indicated by Monique de Ganay in the cards she had made and in her travel diary. It was therefore probably this very day that Charles van den Broek d'Obrenan photographed Ernest Wauchope with his collection of objects that he had just unloaded on shore with the help of four local guides.
Some objects, supposedly from the Wauchope collection are kept at the musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. These are objects purchased from the dealer Gene van den Grecken in 1966 by Professor Jean Guiart during a mission to Australia financed by the Department of Arts and Letters on behalf of the Museum of African and Oceanic Arts. Among these objects, four are said to come from the collection of Ernest Wauchope, one of which is believed to be from the Yuat River region (Guiart, 1967: figs. 3 & 4, 7 & 8). But Harry Beran (2016: 188-191) has highlighted that these were works made by a brilliant forger as part of a vast hoax.
We can therefore now say that the man in the white outfit, located on the left of the photograph by Charles van den Broek d'Obrenan, is indeed Ernest Wauchope in the company of four Sepik men. On the ground, is the impressive collection of objects from the villages of the Yuat River and the mooring rope of the vessel Balongot.
Thanks:
We would like to thank Kirk Haufman and Yvonne Carillo, who gave us access to the Archives of the Australian Museum in Sydney.
Ernest Wauchope (left of photo) with a group of Aiome Papuans living in the hills overlooking the Ramu River near Madang (Photo taken from a publication. All rights reserved).
Bibliography:
BATESON Gregory, (1936) 1958. Naven. A survey of the problems suggested by a composite picture of the culture of a New Guinea tribe drawn from three points of view. Stanford (California), Stanford University Press, trad. française 1971 : J. P. Latouche et N. Safouan, "La cérémonie du naven", Paris, éditions de Minuit.
BERAN Harry, 2016. Nineteen “New Guinea” Sculptures by a Mystery Hoaxer from Gene van Grecken Collection, Journal de la Société des Océanistes, n°142-143, pp. 179-192.
COIFFIER Christian, 2014. Régine van den Broek. Une artiste à bord de La Korrigane, Paris, Editions d'Art Somogy.
COIFFIER Christian, 2015. Ernest Wauchope and the Art of the Yuat River, Tribal Art Magazine, vol. XX:1, n°78: 104-117.
FORTUNE Kate, 1998. Malaguna Road. The Papua and New-Guinea Diaries of Sarah Chinnery, Canberra, National Library of Australia.
GUIART Jean, 1967. "Primitive Art and Structures", Journal de la Société des Océanistes, Volume XXIII, n°23: 1-9, fig.1-11.
HOWARTH, Crispin, 2015. Myth+Magic, art of the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea, Canberra, National Gallery of Australia.
STENSAGER, Thomas Otte, 2012. The Monsunen Expedition, Chronicle of a Danish Adventure, in Tribal Art Magazine, Autumn, n°65: 74-83.
VAN DEN BROEK D'OBRENAN, CHARLIE, 1939. The Voyage of the Korrigane, Paris, Ed. Payot.
Footnotes
1Cf. Letter from Ernest Wauchope dated 26/8/1934 to the secretary of the Australian Museum in Sydney.
2Cf. Note to the Trustees of the Australian Museum of 5 July 1934, entitled: E.J. Wauchope, Awar Plantation, Collecting Ethnographical Specimens.
3Cf. Letter from the secretary of the Australian Museum of 30 January 1935 to E. Wauchope.
4Cf. Letter from the central administration of the Territory of New Guinea to Rabaul, dated May 2, 1935, to the secretary of the Australian Museum in Sydney. It is signed by Ramsay Mc Nicoll.
5Cf. Note from the Australian Museum of August 1935 approved by the trustees and entitled: Wauchope E.J. Collecting New Guinea Specimens.
6Cf. Letter from Ernest Wauchope, 22 June 1935, to the secretary of the Australian Museum in Sydney.
7This is most certainly the Dane Bodjsen-Moller who, after the sinking of the ship Monsunen in Vanikoro (Coiffier, 2014: 112 and 166), abandoned his companions on the way back to organize a small expedition in the company of the Scotsman William McGregor. They obtained from the Australian administration the right to acquire six human skulls as well as objects decorated with bird of paradise feathers. They collected, particularly in the Lower Sepik region, nearly seven hundred objects (Stensager, 2012: 79).
8Cf. letter from E. Wauchope, September 24, 1935, to the secretary of the Australian Museum in Sydney. The Wauchope couple left Angoram that very day.
9Cf. Letter from Rudder's Limited of Sydney, 7 November 1935, to the secretary of the Australian Museum.
10Sarah Chinnery is the wife of Pearson Chinnery, an ethnologist working for the Australian administration and responsible for indigenous affairs.
11Monique de Ganay is the wife of Etienne de Ganay, captain of the yacht La Korrigane.
12The ethnologist had asked Bob Ovehall to pass on this large mosquito net to Camilla Wedgwood.