A superb Lower Sepik River Flute Mask, Papua New Guinea

The handwriting on the reverse of the offered mask suggests it once belonged to the German collector, ethnographer, and amateur photographer Arthur Baessler (b. 1857 d. 1907). After Baessler's death, the main part of his photographic collection, which documents his travels to Oceania and South America, was given to the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, now part of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Other parts of the collection were given to the museums in Stuttgart and Dresden. In his will, Baessler also set up an endowment for the ethnographic studies journal Baessler-Archiv, which was first published in 1910.

For closely related masks cf. Chauvet (1930: pl. 97, fig. 385); de Grunne (1979: fig. 6.12); Loudmer, Paris, June 24, 1981, lot 25 for a mask previously in the collections of Baessler and Heinrichs; and Marseilles (2000: 252, fig. 247). The last mask, collected before 1901 by Hans Meyer, is particularly close in style and the pigmentation on the front.