This lovely Resting Caribou is from the same collection as the magnificent Walking Caribou (Lot 27) and attests to both the consummate skill of the artist and the discerning eye of the collectors. Indeed this caribou by Osuitok exhibits much the same elegance and grace found in the best of the artist’s upright caribou. The animal’s pose is lifelike and delicate; its proportions are harmonious; and its bearing is regal. As Osuitok got older and more frail he encountered great difficulty with the fragile legs on his standing or walking caribou. After about 1990 he solved this problem in one of two ways: he either portrayed his caribou in a resting pose thereby obviating the need for negative space; or he enlarged the size of his caribou subjects and slightly thickened their proportions, effectively increasing the diameter of the legs. He also enlisted the help of family members more and more. These various solutions did not always yield the best results aesthetically.

References: See the magnificent Kneeling Caribou by the artist in the permanent collection of the West Baffin Co-op in Jean Blodgett, In Cape Dorset We Do It This Way (Kleinburg, ON: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1991), cat. 44. For a lovely and similarly posed kneeling adult caribou, from 1970, in the Canadian Museum of History collection see Alistair Macduff and George M. Galpin, Lords of the Stone (North Vancouver: Whitecap Books, 1982), p. 30; also illus. in Canadian Eskimo Arts Council, Sculpture/Inuit (University of Toronto Press, 1971), fig. 143, and George Swinton, Sculpture of the Inuit (M&S, 1972/92), fig. 431. For a 1983 photo of Osuitok with a larger reclining caribou see Jean Blodgett, “Osuitok Ipeelee” in Alma Houston, ed., Inuit Art: An Anthology (Winnipeg: Watson & Dwyer, 1988), p. 43. See First Arts Auctions, July 2020, Lot 17 for an important early depiction of a resting caribou calf by Osuitok. For an example from the late 1980s see Walker’s Auctions, November 2016, Lot 90.