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Provenance:

Seahawk Auctions, Burnaby, BC, 3 April, 2016, lot 92;
Private collection, Ontario

Note:

A mask of exquisite composition and an inventive but traditionally informed style, it represents Komokwa, whose name translates as “wealthy one,” or more literally “copper-maker,” the powerful ruler of the undersea who inhabits an underwater palace filled with abundant treasure. A part of the legends of the Kwakwaka’wakw and Nuxalk First Nations, Komokwa is believed to control the rise and fall of the tides, as well as being the master of the seal and sea lion population. [1] Komokwa is sometimes thought to have the ability to confer great wealth, as he may return as gifts, objects once thrown in the water as evidence of wealth and prestige by high-ranking members of the community during potlatch ceremonies.

Richard Hunt was born a Kwaguilth of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation in Alert Bay, BC. Descended from a high-ranking lineage, his family has been important both in the Alert Bay Kwakwaka’wakw community, and to the larger study and preservation of Indigenous Northwest Coast traditions.

The son of artist and hereditary chief Henry Hunt, brother of Tony and Stanley C. Hunt, and the grandson of the celebrated Mungo Martin, on his father’s side Richard is descended from George Hunt. Notably George Hunt was employed to assist in fieldwork by anthropologist Franz Boas, and is now deservedly considered a pioneering and important linguist and ethnologist in his own right. [2]

(1) Cheryl Shearar, Understanding Northwest Coast Art, A Guide to Crests, Beings and Symbols, (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2008), 65.
(2) Douglas Cole, Captured Heritage, The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artefacts, (Washington: University of Washington Press, 1985), 156-163.