MATHEW AQIGAAQ (1940-2010) QAMANI'TUAQ (BAKER LAKE)
Father Playing with Son, 1971
stone, 8 x 7.5 x 5 in (20.3 x 19.1 x 12.7 cm)
signed and dated, "ᐊᑭᒐ / 1971"; inscribed, "FROM KEEWATIN / EDUCATION / STAFF".

Provenance
A Toronto Collection.

The theme of mothers and children is one of the central motifs in Inuit art, which assumed poignancy for many in the Kivillaq (Keewatin) Region who saw mass starvation and evacuation as a result of the declining caribou herds. Familial bonds were paramount to survival. It is rather unusual to encounter a scene of playful domesticity between a father and son, as seen here. In Father Playing with Son, Aqigaaq lavishes the same careful attention to his paternal subject as he would with his more typical maternal themes. The scene is boisterous, but is imbued with the same lovely, corpulent, and well-finished volumes we have come to expect from the master.

References: For subjects of the Mother and Child that date to the same period, see Darlene Wight, Winnipeg Collects: Inuit Art from Private Collections, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1987), cat. 20, p. 11; For slightly earlier examples, see Jean Blodgett, Grasp Tight the Old Ways: Selections from the Klamer Family Collection of Inuit Art, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983), cat. 9, p. 42-3, also in Canadian Eskimo Arts Council, Sculpture / Inuit: Masterworks of the Canadian Arctic, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), cat. 302.