The Chauvet/Roudillon Eskimo Harpoon

A superb harpoon (unaaq) for hunting bears, walrus and seals, decorated on the handle with a finger rest carved in the form of a miniature seal head with inlaid eyes. The long, powerful point carved from walrus ivory was intended for hunting bears from the ice floe. This large, straight point devoid of barbs is grooved on the top and sides in order to increase the bleeding of the wound causing the rapid weakening of the beast and allowing the animal to be attacked repeatedly with the harpoon. At the other end of the harpoon is a large whalebone ballast and point holder beautifully adorned with three finely carved, high relief rings. The two elements at each extremity are held to the wooden shaft with skilful ligatures made of tendons and marine mammal skin of remarkable quality of execution. The shaft is made of a long driftwood shaft.

Eskimo, Western Alaska.
Wood (cedar or pine), walrus tusk (Odobenus rosmarus divergens), bone, leather and tendons all with a superb and old patina of use (a few old worm holes).
Culture Thule circa 1800-1900 AD
181.5 cm

Provenance Provenance :
Collection of Doctor Stéphen Chauvet (1885 - 1950) (according to reminiscences of the Jean Roudillon family)
Jean Roudillon collection and acquired from the above before 1950.
Auction of the collection of Jean Roudillon, Ader, Drouot, 6/06/2024, lot 59.

 
Dr. Stéphen Chauvet, (1885-1950), was a doctor and a specialist and collector of the traditional arts of Africa and Oceania, which he helped to make known in France. Stéphen Chauvet is known for his passion for traditional African and Oceanic arts. After the First World War, he obtained from the widow of Commander Bertrand, returning from Zinder, a small female statuette from Sudan and a double mask. As a doctor and person curious about all things, unconventional and innovative, Chauvet was seduced by traditional African art. Chauvet wrote on African art, African music, the medicine of primitive peoples, the arts of New Guinea and Easter Island. Considering the object as an indispensable means of access to the knowledge of cultures, he criticizes a cerebral anthropology that ignores the examination of the material products of civilizations. His intellectual passion was therefore logically coupled with a material passion and he became a collector of traditional African art. Chauvet, who had a residence in La Gaude, was informed of the sale of the property of Count Rodolphe Festetics de Tolna. Festetics de Tolna was living in Antibes at the time of the outbreak of the World War I. Considered an Austro-Hungarian citizen, his property was confiscated and the part of the collection that had not been donated to the Neprajzi Múzeum (Museum of Ethnology) in Budapest was consigned for years to the customs office in Nice. The collection was finally put up for sale. Chauvet owned a copy of Festetics' book and was aware of the wealth of the collection. This rich and noble Hungarian had sailed in the Pacific, on a personal yacht, at the end of the nineteenth century and had brought back many souvenirs. After the war, these were sequestered — as he was an Austrian subject — in his property named « Les Eucalyptus » on the Côte d'Azur. Following a series of events, Chauvet gained possession of the De Tolna collection; however it was so important that he was obliged to rent a shed on the Boulevard de Grenelle to store it until he could find it proper storage on one floor of his house in the Rue de Grenelle, which he had transformed into a museum. Chauvet's interest in indigenous art was reflected in a certain proselytism; He led many events to make it better known and appreceated. At the beginning of the winter of 1923-1924, he conceived, wrote and edited the guide for the exhibition devoted to the indigenous arts of the French colonies at the Pavillon de Marsan. He campaigned for the creation of a "colonial museum", a Royal Museum of French Central Africa "for the instruction of our compatriots". In 1929, he acquired the collection of Rapa Nui objects brought back from Easter Island by the writer Pierre Loti. In February 1930, he took part in the Exposition d'Art Nègre presenting nearly 400 pieces of "very good quality" in the Galerie du Théâtre Pigalle. His ambition was to "make Paris the centre of the movement in favour of indigenous arts". Three months later, after several weeks of preparation, he launched the Exhibition of Oceanic Art from the French Colonies, at the Galerie de la Renaissance. Also in 1930, the friendship of Marshal Lyautey and Governor General Antonetti enabled him to create, as part of the Colonial Exhibition, at the Palais de Synthèse, an Exhibition of Indigenous Arts from all the French colonies. The preparation of these rooms required nine months of work. At the end of 1930, he took part in the Exhibition of Negro Art at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels to promote the art of the French colonies. On October 17, 1931, as passionate about music as he was about the visual arts, he organized the gala evening given by the International Institute for the Study of African Languages and Civilizations during which he played traditional African tunes and songs. Chauvet was generous to the French museums. In February 1929, he donated a very large collection of African and Oceanic art objects and weapons (more than 800 pieces) to the Trocadero Museum, which had his name engraved in the entrance hall. These pieces are now in the Musée du quai Branly. The Ethnographic Museum of Lyon (1930), Rouen (1931), the Maritime Museum in Brest (1931-1932), the Ethnographic Museum of Cherbourg (1933), were also the objects of his generosity. Some pieces from his collection are now in the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Others are now in private hands, such as those held by the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva.
Jean Roudillon

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Jean Marcel Roudillon, Antique dealer-expert (1923- 2020)
Son of Marcel Roudillon, an antique dealer, and Mrs. Marguerite Sartarin, Jean studied at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris before joining the École du Louvre. Jean Roudillon became an antique dealer in Paris in 1943 and specialized in the ancient arts of black Africa and Oceania, pre-Hispanic South America, and in the art of the High European medieval Periods as well as the antiquities of the Mediterranean basin.

An expert in works of art approved by the Chamber of Professional Experts, Assessor at the Commission for Conciliation and Customs Expertise (1953), Expert for Customs and Excise and at the l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, Vice-President of the Syndicat français des experts professionnels en œuvre d'art et objets de collection, he was also President of the Syndicat National des Antiquaires and a founding member of the Antique Dealers' Fair known as La Biennale des Antiquaires. From 1980 onwards, he stopped all commercial activity in order to devote himself to expertise and appraisals. Since 1961 he has been the expert of reference for the objects brought back by the La Korrigane expedition and for which he has conducted numerous auctions. He is the expert for a large number of notable collections that have gone under the hammer, including that of Paul Guillaume...

Literature: See other examples of less beautiful quality in the collections of the Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Massachusetts including 00.200.354 which has the same type of ring ornamentation.