Magazines - Tribal Art Autumn 2007

By Roger Boulay, researcher and curator, who is charged with the Direction of the Musées de France.

Summary:
In 1903 and 1904, the Parisian publisher Plon-Nourrit released a two-volume account of seafaring adventures that quickly became a bestseller. Under the titillating title Chez les Cannibales (Among the Cannibals), Count Rodolphe Festetics de Tolna related the story of his eight-year cruise through the Pacific aboard his yacht, the Tolna. The narrative is captivating, something of a cross between a ship's log and an adventure novel à la Jules Verne or Louis Boussenard, but more importantly it is also abundantly illustrated with over 350 photographs, which lend considerable documentary interest to the text.
A Hungarian citizen, Count Rodolphe was born in Paris on September 17, 1865. He studied in Vienna and then served in the Hungarian army as a lieutenant in the hussars. In October of 1893, he embarked from San Francisco on a cruise in the South Seas which, for Festetics, was to last eight years. Following the trend of his time, he amassed a collection of ethnographic objects along the way, particularly from Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and the Bismarck Archipelago. The adventure ended with a shipwreck, from which were salvaged "fifty-six three- to four-cubic-meter cases" containing a portion of the treasures carried aboard the Tolna.
Years later, around 1920, the crates containing Festetics' goods were sold at public auction. Dr. Stephen Chauvet, who owned a copy of Festetics' book, acquired at the sale what turned out to be the largest private Oceanic art collection of the time. In 1929–1930, Chauvet donated 814 items to the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro, the bulk of which came from the Pacific voyages of Count Festetics de Tolna. His gift marked the beginning of the dispersion of this historic collection.