Lot 14
SHEOKJUK OQUTAQ (1920-1982) KIMMIRUT / KINNGAIT (LAKE HARBOUR / CAPE DORSET)
Young Hunter with Captured Geese, c. 1954-55

walrus tusk cotton thread, sinew, and black ink, 5.25 x 2.5 x 2 in (13.3 x 6.3 x 5.1 cm)

Provenance
Acquired from the artist c. 1954-55 by a Hudson's Bay Company employee;
Private Collection, Canada.

Sheokjuk carved this portrait of a young goose hunter with great sensitivity and finesse. All the hallmarks of the artist’s classic style are here. The delicate features of the face suggest that this is an older boy or very young man. The details of clothing trim are beautifully incised and carefully inked. The hunter’s implements and even his pack are meticulously fashioned. And each of the figures of the four captured geese is an exquisite miniature carving in its own right.

This fine work strongly resembles an ivory figure of a hunter by Sheokjuk shown in a c. 1955 photograph illustrated on page 154 of Darlene Wight’s Early Masters catalogue, so we are fairly certain that our dating of the work is accurate; it would have been carved just after Sheokjuk’s return to Kimmirut from Cape Dorset in 1954. These carvings and other similar ones may be portraits of the artist’s son; on the other hand they may be self-portraits of Sheokjuk as a youth. His own father died when Sheokjuk was a young boy, so he likely began hunting at a quite early age. Young Hunter with Captured Geese is remarkably appealing. We cannot help but be drawn to the figure’s winsome downturned face, so suggestive of contentment, quiet pride, and perhaps exhaustion. The elder brother of Osuitok Ipeelee, Sheokjuk probably began carving in ivory in the mid-late 1940s during his time in Kimmirut (Lake Harbour). He returned to the Cape Dorset area in 1948, and began carving in stone at the request of James Houston in 1952. Sheokjuk moved back to Kimmirut again in the years 1954-1959, working in both stone and ivory. In our opinion he is one of only a handful of artists who managed to create genuine masterpieces in both materials.

References


For a superb Running Boy by the artist, carved perhaps a year or two before this work, see First Arts Auctions, July 2020, Lot16. See the entire section devoted to this artist in Darlene Coward Wight, Early Masters: Inuit Sculpture 1949-1955 (Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2006), pp. 152-161. This fine work strongly resembles an ivory figure of a hunter by Sheokjuk shown in a c. 1955 photograph illustrated on p. 154. For another contemporaneous and very similarly styled ivory depiction of a young man or boy see Cynthia Waye Cook, Inuit Sculpture In the Collection of the Art Gallery of York University (North York: AGYU, 1988) cat. 7; also illustrated on the cover of the Inuit Art Quarterly (Fall 1987).