The Importance of Provenance: Six Lots with Notable Histories

The history of an item, also known as its provenance, often helps to tell the story of its creation, establishes a known chain of ownership, and provides a record of changing contexts over time.

Our Historical First Nations and Inuit Art auction features several items with notable documented provenances. Join us in a look at six highlights below.

Unidentified, possibly Wabanaki Artist MOTHER BEAVER AND KITS BELT CUP (CANOE CUP)
SECOND-HALF 19TH CENTURY

Small belt cups or so called “canoe cups” are perhaps the most iconic North American drinking vessel. Tied or cleated to a sash worn around the waist, they were used in the 19th century by First Nations, as well as by Métis, French Canadian and Scottish fur traders to drink from the abundant fresh water on which they traveled.

Few if any surviving belt cups are as elaborately carved and decorated as a class of cup associated with Northern Maine and Quebec. They are variously attributed to the peoples of the Wabanaki (Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot), to the Anishnaabe–particularly the Ottawa or Ojibwa–and by some even to the Huron-Wendat. The production of these cups spans perhaps 100 years, and share a closely related body of characteristics which are exhibited by the two cups in the present auction.

The cups in this auction are reputed to have been collected in Quebec, and have been in the possession of the consignor’s family from the time of their first known owner, Canadian King’s Counsel, Ivan Tolkien Wotherspoon (1845-1908). Wotherspoon’s family history is a colourful one, and includes the mysterious disappearance and possible murder of his father on a wagon train West ca. 1840s, as well a connection to Mary Kent, an alleged witch of Salem Massachusetts tried in 1634, and a possible connection to Robert Giffard de Moncel, a Perche-based surgeon, apothecary, and New France’s first seigneur under Samuel de Champlain.

While an elaborated history of Wotherspoon’s life and career requires further research, he was evidently an important and active legal practitioner in Quebec. Notably, Wotherspoon maintained a correspondence with important contemporaries including former Federal Army officer, lawyer, United States Secretary of War, and son of Abraham Lincoln, Robert Todd Lincoln. Family oral record suggests that Wotherspoon may have sometimes volunteered legal services on behalf of First Nations clients in Quebec.

While it is not known how Wotherspoon came to own the two belt cups, his interactions with Quebec First Nations taken in combination with the association of such objects as presentation gifts or presentation purchases, suggests a possible context for the acquisition of these remarkable objects.

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Unidentified Artist, possibly James Peachey (d. 1779)
British PORTRAIT OF KANYEN’KEHÀ:KA (MOHAWK) LEADER JOSEPH BRANT (THAYENDANEGEA), 1786

Believed to have been commissioned by Francis Rawdon, 1st Marquess of Hastings, and presented to Joseph Brant during his second visit to London in 1786.

“She wore a gold locket containing an exquisite miniature likeness of her father painted in London. This, she said, was the most faithful likeness of Capt. Brant extant.” William C. Bryant speaking of his visit with Catherine Johns (1790–1867), Matron of the Mohawk Turtle Clan and daughter of Joseph Brant.

Joseph Brant, or Thayendanegea (“he sets or places together two bets”) was a Kanyen’kehà:ka (Mohawk) war chief, interpreter, and statesman, and a hugely influential and trusted leader of the Haudenosaunee in the 18th century.

Perhaps the best known First Nations figure of his era, he met and lobbied on behalf of Haudenosaunee with many of the most significant Americans and British of the age, notably King George III of Great Britain, American President George Washington, and British Major General Isaac Brock. Until the time of Brant’s death in 1807 he was active in territorial negotiations with the governments of Canada and the United States, a legacy for which Brant is remembered today.

A set of three miniature paintings in goldplated lockets was presented to the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) during his second visit to England in 1786 by Francis Lord Rawdon. Two of the miniatures show Brant and the third Lord Rawdon. Dedicatory inscriptions on the back of the lockets identify Brant’s wife Catherine and his daughter Christiana as the recipients of his likenesses and Brant as that of Lord Rawdon’s picture. All remained in possession of the Brant family at least until 1872, but one of them at an unknown point of time became the property of Murray Turner UE, was inherited by his descendants in England, and has now returned to Canada.

Click here to read an essay on this lot by independent scholar and exhibition curator Christian Feest.

Unidentified Kuskokwim Delta Yup’ik Artist, Bethel or Quinhagak, AK
MONUMENTAL MEN’S PICTORIAL FEAST BOWL, 1907-1917 OR EARLIER

Although historical sculpture from the Arctic is often associated with the medium of ivory, and in later times stone and bone, it is the creations in wood that are perhaps the most recognizable and widely influential artistic achievements of the Yu’pik of the Kuskokwim Delta.

Amongst the Yup’ik both men’s and women’s bowls were subtle and sophisticated forms embellished with distinctive drawn and painted embellishment. As personal possessions, they were unique to their owner, and bore markers of their gender. Men’s bowls such as the present example were carved from a single piece of wood, as opposed to women’s bowls which were composed of multiple pieces. The latter were typically plain, but the former commonly displayed imagery of mythological and supernatural creatures, such as is visible on this bowl.

The present monumental feast bowl is an exceptionally large and well-formed example. The bowl was collected by Moravian missionaries Herman and Elizabeth Holtmeier who served in Bethel and Quinhagak, Alaska between 1907-1917 and is closely related to a documented example in the collection of Anchorage Museum (Cat. No. 2004.059.001) which was acquired by fellow Bethel-based Moravian missionary Edith Kilbuck in the 1890s.

The Holtmeier bowl was gifted to the Carver County Historical Society (CCHS) in Waconia, Minnesota in 1952, and although a number of other important Holtmeier objects in the collection of the CCHS were acquired by the Sheldon Jackson Museum in Sitka, Alaska, the present bowl was sold by the CCHS before the time of the Sheldon Jackson’s acquisition.

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Unidentified Haida or Tlingit Artist
BRACELET WITH ENGRAVED KILLER WHALE DESIGNS, 1920 OR EARLIER

Elaborate metal adornments were important markers of status among nobles on the Northwest Coast at the time of the earliest contact with Europeans.

The present bracelet is a finely engraved and compositionally sophisticated piece of adornment from the latter 19th or early 20th century. The design integrates an image of two killer whales joined at the tail, whose opposing faces meet at the junction of the bracelet’s hooked clasp. Northwest Coast scholar Bill Holm noted the uncommon nature of the design, which was also found on a bracelet illustrated in his classic text for the 1983 exhibition The Box of Daylight.

The present bracelet compares favourably with the bracelet illustrated by Holm, and was collected by the legendary anthropologist and polymath Charles Marius Barbeau, who gifted it to his daughter Dalila Barbeau Price.

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Unidentified Kwakwaka’wakw Artist
BEAR-FORM BOWL, FIRST HALF OF 19TH CENTURY

This small, early, and finely carved Kwakwaka’wakw figural bowl depicts a bear. The bulbous stomach of the subject is swollen with food, and a man’s head is held between its jaws. Small bowls of this size were commonly used to hold condiments, or as personal eating vessels.

The present bowl is closely related to a monumental example held in the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, acquired between 1894 and 1907 by US Revenue Service Captain Dorr F. Tozier (Cat. No. NMAI 6/8742). The present example comes from the collection of 19th century adventurer, fur trader and Strathcona Alderman John Gadis Tipton.

Relatively little information is readily available about the early life of John Gaddis Tipton. Born in Fairview, Illinois in 1849, he was admitted to the bar in 1874. Entrepreneurial and enterprising, family lore has it that Tipton was engaged in horse and fur trading.

Tipton moved north to Alberta in 1894 to pursue opportunities in the Territories, eventually establishing a homestead near Big Island. Like many early residents, he dabbled in an array of professions, including mining, real estate, insurance, loans, and auctions. In 1904, Tipton was admitted to the Alberta bar, a year before Alberta became a province of Canada. Taking an interest in municipal politics, Tipton was elected alderman of Strathcona, and served from 1908 to 1911, a key advocate for the amalgamation between Edmonton and Strathcona. A brief sketch of Tipton was included in the 1913 biographical dictionary Men and Makers of Edmonton.

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Unidentified Nuu-chah-nulth Artist
HALIBUT CLUB, 19TH CENTURY

Fishing clubs were a necessary tool on the Northwest Coast, where hunters pursued both seals and large fish such as halibut, the latter of which could be dangerous to handle in an open boat if not quickly subdued.

This early and much-used club with significant signs of handling and wear, was field collected by the important early collector Lt. George Thornton Emmons (1852-1945). It was acquired by the Denver Museum of Art in 1937, though deaccessioned in 2017.

An anthropologist and ethnographer, Lt. Emmons was perhaps the most important field collector of Northwest Coast art. Stationed in Sitka, Alaska, Emmons worked primarily among the Tlingit and Tahltan, becoming a well-known and respected figure in the communities in which he lived and worked. During his time among the Tlingit, Emmons compiled research for a major book on the Tlingit which was published posthumously in 1991 as the The Tlingit Indians.

Over his career, Emmons collected over 11,000 objects, including some of the most important works of Tlingit art surviving today. The majority of pieces he collected are housed in the collections of public museums including the American Museum of Natural History, and the Field Museum in Chicago.

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About the Auction

These lots are featured in our Historical First Nations and Inuit Art auction, online August 21 to September 3.

In-person previews are available at our Toronto gallery:

Sunday, August 30 from 12 pm to 4 pm
Monday, August 31 from 10 am to 5 pm
Tuesday, September 1 from 10 am to 5 pm

Or by appointment at [email protected]

Please note some lots are located at our Vancouver gallery.

Contact us for more information.