Evaluardjuk carved a number of impressive heads of men and women in the early 1960s. Several of the men depict religious figures. During a burst of creativity in the early-mid 1980s the artist created several other portrait heads. As discussed previously (see Lots 11 and 12) Evaluardjuk had a very studied approach to his subjects; as a rule, he eschewed the generic and formulaic in favour of specificity. Nowhere is this more evident than in his depictions of the human face. It is obvious that Henry’s faces fall into the realm of classic portraiture, for each subject is clearly different and identifiable. We are certain that this wonderful bust is a self-portrait of the artist in middle age, the period between Evaluardjuk’s clean-shaven appearance in youth and the moustache and goatee that he favoured as an elderly man [1].

1. For a very similar work see Self-Portrait from c. 1985 in The Sculpture of Henry Evaluardjuk (Montreal: Eskimo Art Gallery, May 1987), cat. 1.

References: For a portrait head of a bearded religious figure from 1963 see George Swinton, Sculpture of the Inuit, (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1972/92), fig. 530, p. 197; and Maria von Finckenstein ed., Celebrating Inuit Art 1948-1970, (Hull, QC: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1999), p. 135. See also exhibition catalogue for The Sculpture of Henry Evaluardjuk, Montreal, Eskimo Art Gallery, 5-23 May 1987. See the article “Henry Evaluardjuk” by his grandson Jamesie Taligvat Evaluardjuk Fournier in Inuit Art Quarterly (Spring 2023, Vol. 36.1), pp. 70-71. See Head from 1976 in Marie Routledge, Inuit Art in the 1970s (Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 1979), cat. 31, p. 53.