Lot 28
PROBABLY KUPPAPIK RAGEE (1931-1995) KINNGAIT (CAPE DORSET)
Standing Mother and Child, early 1960s

stone, 10.25 x 5.5 x 4 in (26 x 14 x 10.2 cm)
unsigned.

Provenance
Inuit Gallery of Vancouver; Albrecht Collection, Scottsdale, AZ;
Walker’s Auctions, Ottawa, Nov. 2017, Lot 114;
A European Private Collection.

Our artist attribution for this beautifully executed work is based on its strong stylistic similarity to Kuppapik Ragee’s Woman Holding Three Puppies from c. 1961-62 in the Twomey Collection at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and to the stunning Woman Holding a Qulliq attributed the artist (see Lot 8). Mother and Child is carved in the gorgeous mottled green stone used by Cape Dorset artists in late 1950s and early 1960s. Kuppapik began carving in the early 1950s while living with his wife Anirnik at Tikirak camp near Cape Dorset, and he was a well-respected sculptor throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Kuppapik created numerous drawings for a few summers beginning around 1960, but sadly no prints by him were released in annual collections. Examples of his sculpture can be found in the National Gallery of Canada, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the TD Bank, and other prestigious collections.

Reference: For a similarly styled contemporaneous sculpture known to be by Kuppapik Ragee see Canadian Eskimo Arts Council, Sculpture/Inuit: Masterworks of the Canadian Arctic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), fig. 251; also illustrated in Darlene Coward Wight, The Jerry Twomey Collection at the Winnipeg Art Gallery: Inuit Sculpture from the Canadian Arctic (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2003), p. 54.