A stone sculpture of ten figures. This astonishing sculpture, reminiscent of the tiki friezes of the Austral Islands, is in fact a sculpture from the Marquesas Islands. We know the subject of several tiki carvings aligned horizontally across the putaiana female ear ornaments carved in marine ivory or human bone, but this rare sculpture in grey volcanic tuff is part of a corpus of Marquesan carvings that has been little studied until now, but does exist. It is comparable to another sculpture published by Karl Von den Steinen in 1925, also representing ten figures, photographed on the island of Hivaoa and described by K. Von den Steinen as a family consisting of an eldest son and nine children. Although not exactly identical, the positioning of the figures on the sculpture reproduced by K. Von den Steinen is relatively similar to that of the sculpture in the Jean Roudillon collection. It includes two figures on either side carved laterally and four figures carved on each side, so some of the "tiki" have their arms folded over their bodies in the same way as this other sculpture described as a Hivaoa family. Another sculpture, this one with four tiki carved back to back, in the collections of the Stuttgart Museum, is also reproduced in Von den Steinen's book on the same plate. Examination of the surface and patina of this rare sculpture bears witness to its authenticity. Marquesas Islands Stone (gray tuff), small visible chips and old accidents, oxidation, very fine patina and old erosion H. 18 cm - L. 25 cm For two other sculptures with several tiki (or figures), see Vol. 3, Plate C, nos. 7 and 8 in Die Sammlungen de Die Marquesaner und ihre Kunst, Karl Von den Steinen, Ed. Dietrich Reimer / Ernst Vohsen 1925. Many thanks to Vincent Bounoure for his invaluable help with this work. Provenance : Jean Roudillon Collection