Additional Images

Provenance:

Purchased from West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative Ltd., ca. 1961, passed by descent to the present Private Collection, Ontario

Note:

Niviaxie’s legacy will forever be intertwined with polar bears. It is an animal which he is said to have favoured for his carvings, is the subject of only two of twelve prints associated with Niviaxie, and is part of the powerful myth of the artist. Notably Niviaxie’s mysterious death occurred during a polar bear hunt, and was reported in a now widely repeated and much stylized account in Time Magazine.[1]

Two Bears Hunting was printed in two types, in green, or—as in the present example—blue. Both variations were inked in a rich gradient of colour from dark to light, using the negative space of the paper to represent the wayfaring animals, and to add a texture to the background which evokes snowfall, or perhaps a celestial phenomenon. It is notable that the Aurora Borealis is closely associated with the spirits of ancestors among many Inuit.[2]

Released as part of the Dorset Series, a collection of approximately seventy prints also referred to as the Dorset Collection, Northern Collection, or Northern Releases, works in the series were only made available locally to visitors to the Cooperative, and were never distributed in the south.[3] The present example was acquired in Kinngait circa 1960, and has been preserved with its original and vibrant colour intact.

[1] Time Magazine, “Art: Land of the Bear”, Vol. LXXV No. 8, Monday, 22 February 1960.
[2] Asgeir Brekke and Alv Egeland, The Northern Light: From Mythology to Space Research (Oslo: University of Oslo, 1979), 1.
[3] Richard Crandall, Inuit Art, A History (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2000), 143.