Provenance:

Gimpel Fils, London, UK
The Collection of Ken Mantel, Chiswick, UK
By descent to the present Private Collection, United Kingdom

Note:

In late 1957, before the creation of the legendary 1959 print release at Kinngait (Cape Dorset), James Houston had brought printmaking techniques developed in Japan back to Kinngait. Artists Osuitok Ipeelee, Iyola Kingwatsiak, Eegyvudluk Pootoogook, Kananginak Pootoogook, and Lukta Qiatsuk manipulated, adapted, and developed the techniques to suit their needs and preferences, producing a series of approximately twenty pioneering and experimental prints.[1] Thirteen of the images were offered for sale through the Hudson’s Bay Company department store in 1958 to positive reviews in the Winnipeg Free Press.

Waddington’s is pleased to present two early and rare examples from the 1958 collection in the present auction, Walrus on Ice and Baffin Island Woman. The prints are from the collection of influential early collector Ken Mantel, who acquired the prints from the Westminster and London-based art gallery Gimpel-Fils. Both Gimpel-Fils founder Charles Gimpel, and Ken Mantel were important figures in the history of Inuit art.

Gimpel was a photographer, as well as a collector and art dealer, who travelled in the Canadian
Arctic on numerous occasions between 1958 and 1968, and became entranced by Inuit art, acquiring numerous important early works on his visits.[2]

Gimpel's pioneering Westminster gallery was a hub for Inuit art in England. Works offered by Gimpel included creations by artists such as Parr, Akeeaktashuk, and Kenojuak Ashevak. Notably, Gimpel exhibited these works directly alongside important contemporary English and American art by sculptors including Henry Moore and Isamu Noguchi.[3]

[1] Norman Vorano et al., Inuit Prints: Japanese Inspiration: Early Printmaking in the Canadian Arctic (Gatineau: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2011), 9.
[2] Richard Crandall, Inuit Art, A History (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2000), 126.
[3] Kay Gimpel, The Charles Gimpel Collection of Innuit Drawings 1961-1966 (Toronto: The Yanneff Gallery, 1983)

Ken Mantel was born in 1950 in London, England and started his career as a petroleum geologist in 1975.

His work took him to Arctic Canada in the 1970s where he became fascinated by, and started to collect Inuit Art, in common with so many of the earlier collectors who travelled to the north. In Ken’s case, the link from science to art was undoubtedly the raw medium and its evolution into dramatic sculpture.

On returning to Britain in 1981 Ken opened the Narwhal Inuit Art Gallery, alongside his wife, Tija. As collectors turned slowly to gallery owners instead of their annual trips to Toronto, to buy from the major co-ops and auction houses, in 1999 the Mantels also established NIAEF (Narwhal Inuit Art Education Foundation) as a registered charity to help raise awareness of the Inuit through their art.

Ken Mantel was regarded as the British authority on the subject of Inuit art and the gallery stood in a unique position as the only one of its kind in the country. Following his early papers, newspaper articles, art publications, public talks and discussions, etc, Ken’s knowledge and passion for the artform culminated in ‘Tuvaq’, the first British-led book on the subject.

It is with great fondness that Tija and her children, Sasha, Tanja and Misha now repatriate this collection to continue Ken’s legacy, as another chapter in the history of Inuit Art in Britain.

- Tija, Sasha, Tanja and Misha Mantel

It has been a privilege and a pleasure to have known and met many of the characters who have helped to shape the history of Inuit art, mostly in Canada but also in the USA, Europe and of course my homeland Britain.

- Ken Mantel, 1950-2024