Grand masque soleil ,Kwakiutl,Colombie Britannique, Côte nord-ouest

au visage associant les traits humains à ceux d'un faucon - bouche aux commissures abaissées, long nez crochu, yeux exorbités aux pupilles rehaussées de plaques de cuivre, épais sourcils arqués – ceint d'un bord festonné rapporté et fixé à l'arrière. Décor curviligne polychrome noir, blanc, gris, rouge et vert foncé.

Collection Erna Gunther
Collection Walter Waters, Alaska
Collection privée, New Jersey
Sotheby's, New York, 15 novembre 1980, n° 350
Collection privée, Santa Fe, NM

Reproduit dans :
Robert Ashton and Jozefa Stuart, Images of American Indian Art, New York, 1977, 4^e de couverture

The mask is in very good original condition. The nose is sculpted in two parts.
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Le masque soleil constitue l'une des images les plus emblématiques de l'art amérindien, comparable en ce sens aux atours de tête en plumes des Indiens des Plaines.

cf. Hawthorn (1979 : 27, Pl. XXIII; n° 425-28) pour un masque étroitement apparenté, le soleil également évoqué par un visage humain à bec d'oiseau, entouré de motifs rapportés rayonnants. 

Selon toute vraisemblance, ce masque fut utilisé par les Dluwalakhas - l'une des quatre sociétés de danse des Kwakiutl :  "les danseurs Dluwalakha portaient des masques représentant les emblèmes familiaux - d'origine surnaturelle - tirés de la mythologie et du dloogwi" (Hawthorn: 49). La transmission du don surnaturel s'effectuait au travers de la danse. Ceux mettant en scène des éléments naturels tels que le soleil – comme ici -  la lune, ou l'écho "évoquaient des légendes et jouaient un rôle dans le récit et la réappropriation sociale des mythes familiaux" (idem).

Elève de Franz Boas, l'anthropologiste Erna Gunther (1896-1982) conduisit en particulier, à la fin des années 1950, des recherches sur les collections d'art de la côte nord-ouest dans les musées européens et américains, avec un intérêt tout particulier pour les pièces collectées au XVIII^e siècle (cf. Gunther, Indian Life on the Northwest Coast of North America as Seeen by the Early Explorers and fur Traders During the Last decades of the Eighteenth Century, 1972). 
Walter Waters, avait ouvert dans les années 1920 un magasin de curiosités à l'enseigne du Bear Totem Store. Grâce aux liens qu'il avait établis avec les artistes autochtones du sud-est de l'Alaska, Waters avait pu rassembler une excellente collection d'objets Tlingit. Une grande partie de sa collection est aujourd'hui conservée au Denver Art Museum et au Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Université de Washington.

A large Kwakiutl sun mask, British Columbia, Northwest Coast

The sun mask is one of the most iconic images in American Indian art, ranking alongside the feather headdress of the Plains Indians.

See Hawthorn, (1979 : 27, pl. XXIII; figs. 425-28) for a comparable example in which the sun is also shown as a round, humanlike face, surrounded by pointed pieces of wood denoting rays, and with a beak jutting from the face.

It is quite probable that this mask was used by the Dluwalakha, one of the four dancing societies of the Kwakiutl. 'Dluwalakha dancers wore masks representing the family crest myth and the family dloogwi, which were supernatural in origin' (Hawthorn: 49). The supernatural gift was passed on through the dance. Masks illustrated legends involving characters such as 'the sun, the moon, echo, and other elements of nature. A great number of them referred to the animals, birds, and local features of the landscape that played a role in the recounting and reenactment  of family myth' (ibid.).

A pupil of Franz Boas, the anthropologist Erna Gunther (1896-1982) conducted research on Northwest Coast art in European and American Museums at the end of the 1950s, with a particular interest in pieces collected during the 18th century (see Gunther, Indian Life on the Northwest Coast of North America Have Seen bt the Early Explorers and Fur Traders During the Last Decades of the Eighteenth Century, 1972).

In the 1920s Walter Waters opened his curiosity shop, the Bear Totem Store. Thanks to the connections he had established with native artists from the southeast of Alaska, Waters was able to gather an excellent collecting of Tlingit objects. Large parts of his collection are now conserved in the Denver Art Museum and the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington.