[34] A Pacific Northwest Coast Haida Carved and Pigmented Cedarwood Portrait of a European Methodist Missionary Standing holding a hat and walking stick wearing a frock coat with a collar and necktie Perhaps a guardian spirit figure The Base Inscribed in Ink … January 1859… Kamisalski… Second Half 19th Century/Circa 1859
s i z e: 26 cm high – 10¼ ins high p rov e na nc e: Ex English Private collection c f: A Bella Bella standing figure carved of cedar wearing a peaked cap with his hands in his trouser pockets (R.O.M. 23192) Royal Ontario Museum, Canada For centuries the Haida lived on the Queen Charlotte Islands, a remote archipelago off the Northwest coast of Canada. The first European’s landed on their shores in 1774 and found a distinctive and powerful style of sculpture and painting. Haida art was used as a means of displaying myth, lineage and history, all of which were bound by ceremony and entwined as an integral part of their life. The coming of the 19th century Christian missionaries radically altered North West coast society. Every community underwent fundamental reorganisation and their native languages and all-important Potlatch ceremonies were banned. Some artists who went on practising native traditions were sent to jail, and so many began to masquerade their old beliefs and art as newly conceived products for the tourist trade.