Additional Images

Provenance:

Seahawk Auctions, Burnaby, BC, 23 Jun 2013, Lot 152
A Prominent Vancouver Collection, BC

Note:

Widely known as Captain Carpenter, the talented and prolific carver and painter is perhaps the best known of artists working in the Heiltsuk tradition. Over his long career, which spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Carpenter produced a remarkable number of carved chests and boxes, sculpture, and watercraft for which he is well known and highly respected.

Born in the Heiltsuk village of ’Qvuzvai in 1841, Carpenter spent most of his life in, or near Bella Bella (the present site of Waglisla). It was as an adult that Carpenter took on his English name, one that was well suited to a carver born to a long line of artists and makers. In 1900 at the age of 60, Carpenter was employed as the first lighthouse keeper of the Dryad Point lighthouse north of Waglisla, where he continued to make objects for ritual use, as well as sale and trade.

Numerous important examples of Carpenter’s work were acquired by museums over his career, some commissioned directly from Carpenter. However, it is only in recent years with the increased scholarship around Heiltsuk art, and with the generous assistance of Carpenter’s family, that the authorship of many of his works have been correctly identified.

The painting on the present chest is representative of Carpenter’s late period style, with its looser, less formal hand. The walls of the chest are kerfed and steam-bent from a single board in typical fashion. His characteristic slender black formlines, large areas of unpainted ground, and wiry thin red formlines notably embellish the top of the chest, as well as the sides. The latter are more typically the only surfaces bearing designs. On one side of the chest Carpenter has partially concealed the fitting of a dutchman, or square plug to remove a section of unworkable knotted timber from the chest.

[1] Bill McLeannan & Karen Duffek, The Transforming Image: Painted Arts of Northwest Coast First Nations (Seattle: University of Washington Press / Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2000), 220-241.
[2] Martha Black, Bella Bella: A Season of Heiltsuk Art (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum / Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1997),110-113.