Noukahiwa, Oceania, Antique Wahlen Costume Print, 1843-1844

An original antique wood engraving of Noukahiwa in Oceania, an ethnographic costume print from Auguste Wahlen's Moeurs, usages et costumes de tous les peuples du monde, published in Brussels between 1843 and 1844. The plate is lettered “Noukahiwa (Océanie.)”. Noukahiwa is the nineteenth century French spelling of Nuku Hiva, the largest island of the northern group of the Marquesas in eastern Polynesia. The island was known to European and American readers through the voyage narratives of the preceding half century, and France took formal possession of the Marquesas in 1842, a year before the first of these volumes appeared, which is one reason the group is well represented in a French language costume series of this date.

Moeurs, usages et costumes de tous les peuples du monde was published in Brussels by Auguste Wahlen at the Librairie Historique-Artistique between 1843 and 1844. The four volumes set out to describe the dress, customs, occupations and social divisions of the peoples of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, drawing on travel narratives, earlier costume books and other sources then treated as authoritative, and they carried approximately one hundred and ninety to two hundred plates, the count varying between copies and editions.

Wahlen was the publisher and compiler rather than the artist; where a name such as Duverger, Pannemaker, Mercier, Lisbet, Markaert or Vermorcken appears on a sheet it belongs to the illustrator or the engraver, and no artist is attributed here without one.

The plates are wood engravings on paper. The images should be read as a nineteenth century European interpretation of the cultures they show rather than as a documentary record, which is a large part of what makes the series interesting to historians of the period. This impression is uncoloured. Marquesan subjects are among the more interesting in the series, both for the region itself and for what the plates show of how Polynesia was presented to a European readership at the moment of annexation. The sheet suits a study, a library or a room with a Pacific theme, and this ethnographic print hangs naturally with the young girl of Madison Island from the same volumes and with other Wahlen costume prints of Oceania.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with a faint tide line, a few spots and light soiling confined to the margins; the image itself is clean.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.