Over an almost ten-year period Hattie Mannik interviewed twenty-six Baker Lake elders, including George Tatanniq (in 1990), about traditional life and hunting practices. His fascinating account focuses on caribou hunting, fishing, and periods of hunger and starvation [1]. Tatanniq discusses various aspects of caribou hunting, and he makes mention several times of his preference for fat caribou.

It makes us wonder whether this unusually stocky depiction of a caribou is perhaps an idealized version of the animal imagined by the artist! This beautiful sculpture is unusual in Tatanniq’s oeuvre not only for its sturdy proportions, but also for its large antlers and its almost shaggy texture. The animal is carved very much in the artist’s trademark style and spirit - with clean, elegant lines and volumes, a carefully textured finish, and a lovely feeling of stillness and grace - yet with everything slightly exaggerated. Fascinating. And charming. And ever so lovely [2].

1. Hattie Mannik, ed., Inuit Nunamiut: Inland Inuit (Baker Lake, 1998), pp. 222-237.

2. For more typical masterpieces by the artist see Lots 27 and 86.

References: For a mid-1960s Caribou attributed to the artist see Walker’s Auctions, Ottawa, 5 May 2013, Lot 9. For a contemporaneous Muskox of rather similar proportions and quite similar texture by the artist see Walker’s Auctions, Ottawa, 16 May 2018, Lot 80.