Count Rodolphe Festetics De Tolna, Woman Of New Ireland, Oceania

Photograph of a woman on the north coast of the island of New Ireland, taken by Count Rodolphe Festetics de Tolna during his journey, 1893-1900.
Festetics de Tolna was on an expedition that crossed the entire Pacific between October 1893 and February 1900, when his ship ‘the Tolna’ ran aground in the Maldives, Indian Ocean.
He published two books, Chez les Cannibales: 8 ans de croisière dans l'océan Pacifique à bord du yacht le Tolna’ and Vers l'écueil de Minicoy, in 1903 and 1904 respectively.
In the latter, which reproduces our image, he notes: ‘I arrived on 19 March at the wooded island of Noussa, which rises about twenty metres above sea level and is surrounded half a mile from the shore by a circle of rocks.
The men are naked there, but the women wear a small tuft of a special kind of moss on the front and back, which their husbands fetch for them far away in the bush. It is gathered at certain times of the year when it has an aromatic smell that lasts’.

Print on aristotype paper mounted on card (32 x 24cm), with lead white retouching around the woman's face. 
On the front an annotation in ink: Frau von Kapsu, Neu Mecklenburg, Bismarck Archipel. On the reverse, two stamps: ‘K.K. NATUHISTOR. HOF-MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOG.- ETHNOGR. ABTH. PRÄHITOR. U. ANTHROP. S.‘’K.K. Naturhistorisches Hofmuseum’
Provenance: Natural History Museum, Vienna, in the collections until 1902. 

Bibliography: Festetics de Tolna, Vers l'écueil de Minicoy après huit ans dans l'Océan Pacifique et Indien à bord du yacht ‘Le Tolna’, Edition Librairie Plon-Nourrit, Paris, 1904, chapter VI, p. 113.