IDNO

P.99895.VH

Description

On Catalogue Card for duplicate print P.4107.ACH1: “17 plates of Fijians.” [typed text]

Two F.H. Dufty studio portraits from circa 1875-1876. See P.4197.ACH1.
Left: Ratu Marika Toroca, and not the Rokotui Ba as is wrongly written in pencil. See P.99855.VH.
Right: Ratu Nacagilevu of Kadavu. See P.99857, P.87306.VH and P.87311.VH. [Fergus Clunie, 14/7/2003]

A pair of studio portraits of two elderly Christian chiefs.
On the left is Ratu Marika Toroca, a bearded man wearing the courtroom wig?, who had been Native Associate Judge of the old Cakobau Government of the early 1870s. He wears an iwabale sash of white masi round his right shoulder and upper arm.
The chief on the right is Ratu Nacagilevu of Kadavu, wearing a pinstripe shirt of a type of chiefs in the 1870s. He has a leather belt wallet showing beneath his waist sash, worn over a patterned cotton isulu wrap-around kilt. The lobe of his left ear has been pierced and expanded to accept a saunidaliga ear lobe ornament of the type demanded by the Fijian religion, but spurned and denigrated by the Wesleyans. See P.87306.VH.
Circa 1875- 1876. [Fergus Clunie, 14/7/2003, from record P.4107.ACH1, updated JD 8/11/2011]
Physical Condition: Print mounted onto card.

Place

Oceania Polynesia; Fiji; Ovalau Island; Levuka; eastern Vitilevu; Tailevu; Namata; Kadavu

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Ratu Marika Toroca; Ratu Nacagilevu (Na Cagi Levu)

Photographer

Dufty, Francis Herbert (Dufty Brothers, Levuka)

Collector / Expedition

von Hügel, Anatole (Baron)

Date

circa 1875 - 1876

Collection Name

von Hügel Collection

Source

von Hügel, Anatole (Baron)

Format

Print Black & White Mounted

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.99726.VH to P.100050.VH were in the belted folder now numbered C539/3/. This was formerly kept in paper archive Large Box G; VH1/4/5. It has now been transferred to the photo archive. The lists describing the contents of this box have been returned to the Paper Archive.

Photographer: These prints were provisionally attributed to “?Dufty Brothers, Levuka”, but the uncropped and unmanipulated print of the left image, P.87349.VH, has the same background as the print, P.87301.VH, which is published on the National Library of Australia website with the attribution to Francis Dufty. Dufty’s Levuka studio is recognisable through the painted studio backdrop to represent a view out a window with shutters (note the knob added to the shutter that casts a shadow). This appears to be a feature of Dufty’s studio throughout the 1870s, although the idealised landscape ‘view’ changes around 1875-1876. The Photographer, Date, and Place fields have been amended accordingly. [JD 16/3/2012]

This print has been catalogued with the support of the Getty Grant Fund. [A. Nadin, 16/9/2003]