Born to a family of carvers, including grandfather Charlie James (Lot 51) and uncle Mungo Martin (Lot 53), Ellen Neel was one of a few pioneering female artists to try her hand at both carving and monetizing her artwork. While she began selling her model totems in her hometown of Alert Bay as young as twelve years old, after her husband's stroke in 1946, Neel turned to woodworking full-time to support her family. By the late 1940s, Neel and her family were selling their model poles in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. While the Neel family became something of a dynasty, with each of the children often contributing in the creation of a totem, Ellen Neel developed a highly distinctive style with a particularly audacious approach to composition. In this example, the elements — the finely crafted wings, carefully delineated formlines, and sense of balance — all point to an extraordinary technical accomplishment that could only be produced by the hand of a master carver. This sizeable and brilliantly hued example by Neel features a thunderbird atop a beaver with a chew stick, over a humanoid head with a simple bevelled cedar block as the base. As with her most desirable works, the wings of the thunderbird have been carved and affixed to the pole. The work is of the Type D variety found in the examples of the Neels’ Totem Art Studio brochures, wherein the totem is fully carved in yellow cedar but left natural as to ground and painted in “traditional” colours. Here we see black, vermillion, viridian green, and brown, finished with several coats of a high gloss lacquer.

References: For a large and record-setting example by the artist, see First Arts, Toronto, 7 December 2022, Lot 113. For additional information on Neel’s career see Phil Nuytten, The Totem Carvers: Charlie James, Ellen Neel, Mungo Martin, (Vancouver: Panorama Press, Ltd., 1982), pp. 44-74. See also Christopher W. Smith's contributions in Carvings and Commerce: Model Totem Poles 1880-2010, (Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery / Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011), pp. 130-132. See also Scott Watson’s essay “Art/Craft in Early 20th Century,” eds. Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Jennifer Kramer, and Ḳi-ḳe-in, Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013), pp. 348-378.