Additional Images

Provenance:

Walker's Auctioneers, Ottawa, ON, 12 Jun 2019, lot 26
Private Estate, Ontario

Note:

Perhaps no single image is more closely associated with early Inuit art, or the mythology of its makers, than the hunter poised with a harpoon. Many of the important early sculptors thought of themselves as hunters first, and artists second. A hunter with a harpoon is the subject of pioneering artist Akeeaktashuk’s most iconic figures, as it is in Niviaxie’s early totemic image Man Hunting at Seal Hole in the Ice.

In the early and mid-1950s powerful camp leaders such as Abraham Nastapoka, Sarollie Weetaluktook, and Johnny Inukpuk were the first to take up sculpting in Inukjuak (Port Harrison), and it is from this early period that Hunter with Harpoon and Avataq dates. (1) While the authorship of many early Inukjuak sculptures has been identified, the output of some artists has been consistently challenging to identify. Three of the region's most lauded sculptors, Akeeaktashuk, Isa Smiler, and Johnny Inukpuk are known for a remarkable versatility of styles.

Hunter with Harpoon and Avataq has been sculpted on a grand scale, well in excess of twice the size of many large Inukjuak compositions, and notably nearly identical in size to the towering Hunter (Cat. No. EC 82-603) by Johnny Inukpuk from 1971 in the Collection of the TD Bank Financial Group. (2)

(1) Darlene Coward Wight, Early Masters: Inuit Sculpture 1949-1955 (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2006), 22.
(2) Wight, Early Masters, 84.

Related Works:
TD Bank Financial Group Collection. Cat. No. EC 82-603. http://art.avataq.qc.ca/images/uploads/artist_profiles/83/inukpuk,_johnny029.jpg
Darlene Coward Wight, Early Masters: Inuit Sculpture 1949-1955 (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2006), 84.
Waddington’s Auctioneers, Toronto, ON, 18 Nov 2018, lot 103

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