Ethnography

Image 5 of 69
  previous page next page

"A Moo.bee Ornamented after a Burial with a Club of great / size over the Shoulder"

Artist: Port Jackson Painter
Created: [between 1788 and 1797]
Dimensions: 17.9 x 15.1 cm
Reference: Watling Drawing - no. 44

 

hide detailed image description

Half-length portrait of an unidentified Aboriginal man against a plain background, framed in tondo with a black ink border measuring 4.2 cm. in diameter. The man is depicted with his torso facing forwards and his head turned in profile to the right. His hair is decorated with bone and tooth hanging ornaments, and his face with a stripe of white and red-ochre that runs up from from his cheek and across his forehead. His chest is painted with a mottled band of white and red-ochre that runs down from his shoulders in a v-shape, and his upper arms are marked with black lines representing cicatrices. A large club with a flat top painted with orange and white stripes radiating from a central spike is depicted behind his head to the left. The drawing is annotated in brown ink. It has a pencil sketch of a leaf-tailed gecko on the reverse.

 

show notes