Additional Images

Provenance:

Collection of Harold Pfeiffer, Ottawa, ON
Waddington's Auctioneers, Toronto, ON, 16 Nov 1998, lot 217
Private Collection, Charlottesville, VA

Note:

The work of an unidentified early Inukjuak (Port Harrison) sculptor, Woman with Kakiniit (Tattoos) is characterized by the artist's rendering of the figure’s apparently joyous expression, finely incised Kakiniit, and the sculpture’s exquisitely polished surface.

The sculpture was collected by artist Harold Pfeiffer, and was previously offered at Waddington's in 1998 as part of the estate of the collector.

Harold Pfeiffer studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Quebec City from 1925-27. Pfeiffer then travelled to London and Paris in the early 1930s to further his artistic development at notable galleries including the British Museum, The Victoria and Albert, the Tate Gallery and the Louvre. (1)

During the early 1950s, Pfeiffer’s friends James and Alma Houston suggested that he join the federal department of Northern Affairs to work with tuberculosis patients in hospitals and rehabilitation centres in the Arctic. There Pfeiffer would work with many of the important artists who were treated at the hospital, most notably Kenojuak Ashevak.

Over his lifetime, Pfeiffer sculpted many portraits of Inuit sitters with whom he was well acquainted. Some of Pfeiffer’s most exceptional portraits were of fellow artists.

Ninety-one portraits by Pfeiffer of Inuit and First Nations subjects are held in two major collections: one in the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, and the other in the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife. His work is also held in a number of other public collections, including the Itsanitaq Museum in Churchill, Manitoba, le Musée d’art in Joliette, Quebec, the RCMP Museum in Regina, Saskatchewan and the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec.

The Man Who Makes Heads with His Hands: The Art and Life of Harold Pfeiffer, Sculptor, was published just after his death in 1997.

(1) John A. Stevens and Harold Pfeiffer, The Man Who Makes Heads with His Hands: The Art and Life of Harold Pfeiffer, Sculptor (Ontario: General Store Publishing House, 1997), 11, 17.
(2) Waddington’s Auctioneers, Important Sale by Auction (Toronto: Island Communications, 1998), 3.