Daughter of Luke Anguhadluq (see Lots 49, 50) and wife of Josiah Nuilaalik (see next Lot 69), Ruth Qaulluaryuk both drew and sewed works on cloth throughout the 1970s but only became a prolific textile artist in the late 1980s. Her interest in depicting landscape (and specifically Arctic flora) is evident already in her lovely 1974 print Tundra with River [1]. Qaulluaryuk’s most famous work on cloth is a spectacular set of four, Four Seasons on the Tundra from 1991-92 in the Winnipeg Art Gallery collection, in which abstract patches of plants, flowers, and lichen are depicted in pure embroidery [2]. Qaulluaryuk’s stunning works on cloth rival Janet Kigusiuq’s late drawings in their degree of abstraction (see Lot 66).

As with Four Seasons on the Tundra, here Qaulluaryuk fills the ground with abundant and dense vegetation. In each pure block of colour, intricate feather stitches delineate the tiny leaves that branch off from delicately curved stems sewn in chain stitchery, each block butting up against each other to completely fill the space. With Tundra Spring Qaulluaryuk creates a spectacular and colourful patchwork quilt, blurring the distinction between pure abstraction and hyper-realism. One can be forgiven for wanting to sink one’s hands into the delicate carpet of leaves! The scene is beautifully framed by an appliqué border whose tiny hillocks are reminiscent of those in the marvellous Trumpeter Swans from 1973 by Qaulluaryuk’s stepmother Marion Tuu’luq (see Lot 24) - though in reverse! We wonder whether Qaulluaryuk might have been influenced by the older artist somewhere along the way.

1. Exhibited in the international travelling exhibition The Inuit Print (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1977), p. 225.

2. All four are illustrated in Inuit Art Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 2, Summer 1994, p. 9.

References: For a very early example (c. 1972-73) see Darlene Coward Wight, The Faye and Bert Settler Collection, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2004), p. 81. For very similar, important examples by the artist see Ingo Hessel, Inuit Art: An Introduction, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / New York: Harry Abrams / London: British Museum Press, 1998), fig. 145; Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum, (Phoenix: Heard Museum/Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2006, p. 64. See also Darlene Coward Wight, Creation and Transformation: Defining Moments in Inuit Art, (Winnipeg Art Gallery/Douglas & McIntyre, 2012), cat. 95. All four of Qaulluaryuk’s Four Seasons on the Tundra series are illustrated in Bernadette Driscoll’s article “A Woman’s Vision, A Woman’s Voice: Inuit Textile Art from Arctic Canada”, Inuit Art Quarterly (Vol 9, No. 2, Summer 1994), p. 9.