James Houston began soliciting drawings from Niviaqsi and the respected camp leader Pootoogook as early as the fall of 1957. These were used as visual sources for some of the Christmas cards produced by Kananginak, Osuitok, and Houston. Niviaqsi filled several cerlox-bound notebooks (no doubt given to him by James Houston) with graphite and ink drawings that are remarkable for their sureness and clarity of vision. Several of the most famous of Niviaqsi’s print images are based on these drawings, or selected portions of them (see Lots 20, 21). It was standard practice in the early years of Cape Dorset print production for images to be based on “fragments” of more complex scenes [1]. Niviaqsi’s Polar Bear and Cub in Ice is perhaps the most iconic of the prints conceived in this collaborative way. The artist’s original drawing is illustrated next to a copy of the finished print in Inuit Modern, 2010, p. 73. Niviaqsi’s drawing depicts a flight of five geese above the bears, and a seal basking on the ice - and clearly the object of the adult bear’s attention.

Fragmentary or not, Polar Bear and Cub in Ice is a remarkable image, certainly the most riveting and visually interesting aspect of the drawing. Revealing Niviaqsi’s sophisticated interest in describing both void and form, it is an image with aesthetic presence and seductive simplicity. The importance of space — specifically empty space — is coupled with a balanced, but ultimately asymmetrical, composition. Polar Bear and Cub in Ice celebrates negative space on an equivalent basis with the lush surface and physicality of the positive space. With analytic clarity, we read the visual tension of the shimmering blue ink as the floe edge against the sparse forms of the two bears, the eyes and claws of which have been stenciled so heavily in this particular pull by the printmaker (Iyola or Kananginak) that they appear almost black. The whole composition flows so lyrically that the image appears almost as a möbius strip, where colour and space sinuously flow from inside out and back around again. Simply gorgeous.

References: A copy of the print and its original drawing are illustrated in Ingo Hessel, “The World Rediscovers ‘Eskimos’ A New Art is Born” in Gerald McMaster, ed., Inuit Modern: The Samuel and Esther Sarick Collection, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2010), p. 73. The image has also been reproduced in Leslie Boyd Ryan, Cape Dorset Prints: A Retrospective, (San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2007), p. 9; Christine Lalonde and Leslie Boyd Ryan, Uuturautiit: Cape Dorset 1959-2009, (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2009), p. 27, p. 34; Norman Vorano, Inuit Prints: Japanese Inspiration, (Gatineau: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2011), cat. 24, p. 82; and elsewhere.