In its subject, Five Standing Caribou is, of course, reminiscent of Aqjangajuk’s famous (and until 2018, his only) print, Wounded Caribou from 1961. As he had done with his mostly small sculptures from the mid-late 1950s, the young Aqjangajuk depicted his subjects on paper with considerable naturalism, sensitivity, and finesse. Aqjangajuk quit drawing, however, and became a full-time sculptor best known for a style that evolved to favour solidity of form and rugged naturalism, often on a quite large scale. See Lot 83 for a mid-1960s Sea Goddess sculpture by the artist.

Literature: For a related drawing of a single caribou see Feheley Fine Arts, Cross-Currents: Cape Dorset in the 1960s (Toronto, 2001), cat. 34; Wounded Caribou has been extensively reproduced including in Jean Blodgett, Grasp Tight the Old Ways: Selections from the Klamer Family Collection of Inuit Art (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983), p. 178, fig. 9 and Ernst Roch, ed., Arts of the Eskimo: Prints (Montreal: Signum/Oxford, 1974), p. 44-5. For an engraved image on ivory depicting two caribou attacked by wolves see George Swinton, Sculpture of the Inuit (Toronto: M&S, 1972/92), fig. 477