Kanak Stone Ancestor or Spirit Figure, Belep, Belep Islands Archipelago, New Caledonia

Collected in situ on Belep, New Caledonia, by Father Pierre Lambert, SM (Societas Mariae), between 1856 and 1863
Collection of the Marist missionaries, given by the above, and kept at the monastery at La Neylière, France, until circa 1919; then at Hulst, the Netherlands, from circa 1919 until the 1950s; then at Lievelde, the Netherlands, from the 1950s until its deaccession by the Dutch Marist Fathers (Paters Maristen Nederland) in 2010
European Private Collection

Missionary exposition, Maastricht, 1921
Missionary exposition, Amsterdam, 1927
Missionary exposition, Delft, 1933
Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, Kanak: L'Art est une parole, October 15, 2013 - January 26, 2014

Pierre Lambert, "Moeurs et superstitions de la tribu Bélep", Les Missions Catholiques: Bulletin Hebdomadaire Illustré de l'Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi, No. 583, Lyon, August 6, 1880, pp. 377-379
Pierre Lambert, Moeurs et superstitions des Neo-Calédoniens, Nouméa, 1900, pp. 248 and 302, fig. 48
Fritz Sarasin, Ethnologie der Neu-Caledonier und Loyalty-Insulaner, mit einem Atlas von 73 Tafeln in Lichtdruck, Munich, 1929, p. 295 (referenced, not illustrated)
Emmanuel Kasarhérou, "La statuette de Père Lambert", in Emmanuel Kasarhérou, Roger Boulay and Stéphane Martin, Kanak: L'Art est une parole, Paris, 2013, pp. 280-282
R. Pic, "A la recherche d'un patrimoine dispersé: où se trouvent les plus belles objets Kanak?", Beaux Arts Magazine: Kanak (special issue), Paris, 2013, pp. 14-15

Very good condition for an object of this rare type and great age. Weathered and worn from handling and use within traditional culture. Two shallow holes at top edge. Old label on reverse: "201 / 409 [?]". Marks, nicks, scratches, abrasions, and old chips consistent with age and use. Fine aged and rubbed patina.
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Prologue

The Kanak people are the original inhabitants of the Melanesian archipelago of New Caledonia (Nouvelle-Calédonie).  According to Roger Boulay (in Newton 1999: 299): “Though Caledonian social mores and languages […] and its material and artistic culture naturally exhibit many common features with the rest of Melanesia, its position at the far end of the Melanesian arc has seen the island develop a singularly original civilization of its own.”  Kanak sculpture is celebrated for its bold, expressive qualities, its lyrical representations of the human form, and the great antiquity of its traditions.

The Lambert Kanak Statue is among the oldest Kanak sculptures known and a rare survival in stone of a fully-realized anthropomorphic figure in an early, archaic style.  Bearing signs of great age and extensive handling, this sculpture represents a powerful spiritual being, presumably an ancestor or a spirit, bearing classic Kanak aesthetics.  First published in 1880, this sculpture is exceptionally well-documented for a work of Oceanic art, and its recent rediscovery is a significant event for our understanding of ancient New Caledonian sculpture.

Pierre Lambert and the History of the Lambert Kanak Statue

The Lambert Kanak Statue was collected by Père Pierre Lambert SM (Societas Mariae) between 1856 and 1863 on the small island of Belep, at the northern tip of the archipelago that comprises New Caledonia.  This was not long after the first arrival of Europeans in the 1840s, during the period when indigenous ritual traditions were declining under the influence of Christian missionary activity.  Lambert first published and illustrated the statue in 1880 in Les Missions Catholiques, a widely read missionary periodical, and again in his important early study of the ethnography of New Caledonia, Moeurs et Superstitions des Neo-Calédoniens, published in 1900.

When the Lambert Kanak Statue first arrived in Europe is not precisely known, presumably in the late nineteenth century.  The statue entered the collection of "curiosités des Iles Océaniens" which the Marist fathers had been accumulating in their monastery of La Neylière, France, beginning in 1837. Although most of what Lambert collected found its way to the Bordeaux Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, around 1919 the Lambert Kanak Statue was given to the new Marist monastery at Hulst, in the southwest of the Netherlands, in order to serve in temporary missionary exhibitions. Such exhibitions, held during the heyday of imperialist expansion and colonialism, were meant to raise support for missionary efforts. From then on the statue indeed appears regularly in photographs of such events, as part of a small set of Oceanic objects presented in stands presented by Marists - for example in Maastricht in 1921, Amsterdam in 1927, and Delft in 1933 (see fig. 1).

Iconography and Function: The Sacred Stones of New Caledonia

As conveyed in Lambert’s engraving (see fig. 2), the figure bears an introspective, inward expression. The importance of the head, thought to be the locus of the soul in Kanak belief, is conveyed by its relatively large proportion in relation to the rest of the figure.  While the facial features are well articulated, the hands, legs and feet, on the other hand, are rendered schematically and small.  Horizontal lines are incised on the body, and represent a mantle or protective cuirass worn by the subject.

Lambert discusses the present statue in some detail in his study of Kanak ethnography, Moeurs et Superstitions des Neo-Calédoniens (1900). He describes the ritual function of this "fetish" (fétiche) as being similar to that of the nonfigurative “sacred stones” (pierres sacrées) which served to procure blessings and prosperity from the spirit world for their owners (Lambert 1900: 295-296). Wrapped in leaves, buried in the ground or hidden in large shells, they were positioned in front of ancestral skulls at or near cemeteries in rock shelters or underground caves (hypogées).  Ritual specialists acted as intermediaries in consulting the spirits or ancestors dwelling in such sacred objects, usually to ask their help in influencing the spirit world.

Lambert relays an instance in which local farmers working at a yam field unearthed a sacred stone by chance, which led to the rediscovery of an ancient cemetery in a nearby cave. The fact that this cave was unknown to the local population in Lambert’s time shows the significant age of the practice of using such stones (op. cit: 283).

Stone figures were very rare in Kanak ritual art, as are non-figurative “sacred stones”. They were deemed to be inhabited by spirits and consulted in a ritual manner for all sorts of problems, to do with warfare, garden fertility, killing a person by black magic, curing sickness, fishing, and other matters (Lambert 1900: 292 et. seq.). As mentioned, Lambert states that the present statue was handled in exactly the same manner as the sacred stones. Sarasin (1929, pp. 297-305) too discusses their use extensively, referring to his own observations on the island and citing a variety of sources.

Pierre Lambert starts his comments on the present and other sacred objects with the remark: “The stones we are going to discuss are in our possession” [“Nous possédons les pierres dont nous allons parler”, Lambert 1900: 292). The act of collecting such “sacred stones” (pierres sacrées) was almost certainly also one of confiscation of idols attributed to devil worship, as was usual in those days. The Marist Fathers Lambert and Monrouzier were the first missionaries and among the few first Europeans on the island of Belep, which then had only a few hundred native inhabitants. They both actively confiscated “heathen”, “superstitious” indigenous objects, most of which were sent to various museums in France.

Lambert continues his discussion of the present figure: “This remarkable fetish figure was manipulated in the same way as the other stones in the cemeteries, serving as an intermediary to procure prosperity for the tribe from the spirits.” (op. cit.: 302; “Ce curieux fétiche était manipulé à la facon des autres pierres dans les cimetières, comme médium auprès les esprits pour attirer la prospérité dans la tribu.”)

Discussing the corpus of freestanding Kanak figures, the ethnologist and New Caledonia specialist Roger Boulet cites this passage as written evidence confirming the antiquity of such figures (Paris 1990, “témoignage écrit confirmant leur anciennité”). Freestanding anthropomorphic figures from New Caledonia, he observes, are rare and understudied. However, he continues, the fact that they functioned as guardian spirits and in various sorts of magic has sufficiently been demonstrated (op. cit.: 166). Boulet also mentions the role of indigenous ritual specialists in consulting such spirit or ancestor figures.

Lambert, the missionary-ethnologist Maurice Leenhardt (1932, p. 496) and several other authors mention the habit of enwrapping sacred (tabu) objects because unprotected direct contact was thought to transmit dangerous power (mana). This practice also occcured eslsewhere in Oceania, where in some cases it was meant not just to protect humans from but also to actively influence and direct the flow of spiritual force associated with a sacred object. The intensive gloss on the higher parts of the statue would seem to be consistent with such a habit, in combination with the effects of frequent handling - very probably, in view of the thickness of the patina, over several generations, if not centuries. The statue may thus well date from the 18th century or earlier (as also argued in Kasarhérou 2013 and Pic 2013), but, as implied by Lambert, was still in use until shortly before he acquired it.

The Swiss naturalist and ethnologist Karl Friedrich (Fritz) Sarasin, who did extensive fieldwork in New Caledonia in the 1920s, argues that most “and probably all free-standing New Caledonian figures relate to ancestors, protection or sorcery” (Sarasin 1929: 295). On the same page he refers to the present figure, but, knowing it only from Lambert’s book, wrongly assumes that it is a wooden one. He compares it to several other figures, including a 31 cm high wooden figure representing a rain spirit (Regendämon) from Oubatche, New Caledonia.  Several early Kanak sculptures in wood of similar form to the Lambert Kanak Statue are in the Musée du Quai Branly (see inv. nos. “72.56.126” and “71.1886.134.20”).

Sarasin also mentions information provided to him by a native chief to the effect that such sacred (and secret) figures, usually hidden in caves, were inhabited by spirits that were consulted on problems and were offered gifts. This confirms Lambert’s view. Stone idols (Steinidole), Sarasin writes, are very rare in New Caledonia (see Girard 1953: 304: “les très rares sculptures qu’on connaisse”), but some are known from the island of Lifou (one of the Loyalty Islands, north of New Caledonia; see Sarasin 1929: 296; and Archambault 1909).