1919-1930. - Lot 80

1919-1930. Rare and important lot of watercolors, inks and gouaches on rice paper for conjuratory or curative purposes including: - Some twenty paintings depicting plants to ward off malevolent spirits. - Some thirty amulets on paper decorated with conjuratory ideograms in red ink. - Around 30 inks and gouaches on rice paper featuring figures accompanied by ideograms supposed to ward off evil spirits. All annotated in pencil on the reverse and in the margin, and stamped with the Sallet background mark. "There is the sky, there is the water, and the mountain, and the moon, and the wind, but how many other things are here and there! This sentence expresses infinitely the feeling that the man from there has of his universe and of all the invisible to which he puts his faith". Docteur Albert Sallet, excerpt from a work on evil spirits in Annam, 1937. Between 1919 and 1930, Dr. Albert Sallet, a physician major in Indochina and co-founder of the Association des Amis du Vieux Hué, assembled an important and exceptional collection of objects and documents concerning medicine in Annam. In this way, he provides a fresh insight into the magical practices prevalent at the time, which Léopold Cadière had already described in a previous study. In the course of his encounters, he commissioned Annamite sorcerers to make duplicates of images associated with magical conjuring practices. These works, beyond their original artistic quality, were considered sacred in Indochina. Exceptional testimonies to the magical practices of these sorcerers, inseparable from traditional Annamite medicine, these drawings were originally intended to be ingested in tea, or hung in the home. Sometimes placed under the sick person's bed, sometimes affixed directly to the door of the dwelling or attached to tree branches, these magical "amulets" were reputed, through their curative, exorcist and conjuratory functions, to ward off evil and evil spirits. The thay phu thuy, the equivalent of a sorcerer, was the master of these sacred amulets, which he painted to suit the needs of patients at the end of a consultation that could be doubled by the visit of another practitioner such as the thay phap or master of magic words. This lot is one of the most important sets of Annamite conjuratory paintings ever put up for auction. (A few tears). Provenance: Albert Sallet Collection (1877-1948). Military physician in Indochina. Co-founder in 1913 of the Association des amis du Vieux Hué with Léopold Cadière, of the Missions Étrangères de Paris. Corresponding member of the École française d'Extrême-Orient.