Provenance:

Private Collection, Hamilton, ON

Literature:

Cynthia Waye Cook, From the Centre: The Drawings of Luke Anguhadluq (Canada: The Art Gallery of Ontario, 1993)

Note:

Enigmatic images of people with the faces and antlers of caribou appear in Luke Anguhadluq’s imagery in the mid-1970s. The National Gallery of Canada exhibition documented in Cynthia Waye Cook’s important 1993 publication From the Centre: The Drawings of Luke Anguhadluq includes the drawings Caribou with Woman’s Face from 1975/76 and Man with Horns from 1975 which both address the subject. Cook suggests that the images are unlikely to show shamanistic transformation but that they may instead represent “the earliest time on earth, when it was believed men and animals spoke the same language and their forms were mutually interchangeable.” Anguhadluq’s drawings of figures with both animal and human attributes may also be considered in context to closely-related contemporary images by his then-wife, artist Marion Tuu’luuq, most notably a print titled Animals Disguised as People dated to 1975.

Whatever the origin of Anguhadluq’s imagery, in the present work he has treated the subject with a care and attention to composition which is one of his defining attributes and for which Anguhadluq himself likely considered appropriate to his status as a well-respected leader and keeper of stories in his community.

One of four remarkable drawings in this auction by Anguhadluq, the present work is notable for its exceptional condition and delightful vibrancy of colour.