Maori Tekoteko Figure, New Zealand

Acquired in Te Ngae (Rotorua area, North Island) in 1876

Merton Simpson, New York, circa 1965

George et Rosemary Lois Collection, New York

Christie's, Paris, June 16, 2009, lot 236

Sotheby's, Paris, Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie, December 11, 2013, lot 14

Sheikh Saud Al Thani (1966-2014) Collection, Doha, Paris, and London, acquired at the above auction

Jean-Baptiste Bacquart, Paris, 2018

Daniel Hourdé Collection, Paris, acquired from the above in 2019

Galerie Jean-Baptiste Bacquart, Paris, L'Oeil. Une illustre collection, September 11-16, 2018

L'Oeil. Une illustre collection, Galerie Jean-Baptiste Bacquart, 2018, cover illus. and pp. 62-65

The Maori people of New Zealand are renowned for their rich sculptural tradition, which is deeply rooted in social, religious, and genealogical organization. Wood carving (wakairo) is an important practice in Maori material and symbolic culture, notably prominent in the architecture of the community house, where each carved element contributes to the transmission of ancestral memory and founding myths. The tekoteko is a human figure carved from wood, used as a gable ornament, placed at the top of the Wharenui, the ceremonial house. This exceptional tekoteko was collected at ‘Te Gnae’, near Rotorua, in February 1876, as documented in the figure’s ink inscription.

In Maori mythology, Tangaroa is the sacred god of the sea. A well-known legend recounts how Tangaroa, seeking to punish Ruatepupuke—an ancestor closely associated with the origins of wood carving—captured his son Manurihi, carried him to his dwelling at the bottom of the ocean, and transformed his human appearance and identity into those of a bird. He then hung him at the top of his carved house as a tekoteko.[1]

This founding story explains the origin of Maori wood carving and establishes the fundamental role of the carved house and its gable ornament. For several centuries, the carved house - like the chief's residence and storehouses - has been decorated in a particularly elaborate manner. 

The pediment is designed to represent the body of the founding ancestor: the legendary hero of the tribe is symbolically depicted, with the ridge beam corresponding to the spine, the rafters to the ribs, and the ridge sculpture to the head.

The authority of this founding ancestor is conveyed through a striking visual tension between, on the one hand, a body rendered with controlled naturalism - whose posture and proportions, reduced to their essentials, emphasize its power - and, on the other hand, the expressive intensity of the highly stylized wheku face, whose eyes are inlaid with discs of haliotis shell. While the human figures in Maori art, known as tiki, most often represent ancestors rather than deities, the degree of stylization employed by the sculptor varies according to the importance attributed to the social role of the figure represented or, as in this case, to its spiritual dimension.

Cf. A similarly carved example is found in the collection of the British Museum (inventory number: Oc1901, -41), which was made in the 1880s and acquired in 1901 by the museum.[2]

[1] Sidney Moko Mead (dir.), The Maori: Maori Art from New Zealand Collections, 1984, p. 65

[2] Dorotha Starzecka, Roger Neich et Mick Pendergrast, The Māori collections of the British Museum (Taonga Māori in the British Museum, no. 141, pl. 37