Originally from Igloolik, Evaluardjuk was already actively carving throughout the 1950s. He lived on the land in the Pond Inlet and Arctic Bay area until 1959 when he was hospitalized at the Mountain Sanatorium in Hamilton. Evaluardjuk continued to carve throughout his hospitalization; upon his release in the early 1960s, Evaluardjuk and his family settled in Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit) where he was hired to supervise the local rehab arts program for a time.

While Evaluardjuk produced a wide variety of subjects in his lengthy career, so marvelous were his depictions of polar bears that by the end of the 1970s he was carving little else. Owning a “Henry Bear” was (and still is) considered de rigueur for many collectors in the North and the South. It is easy to see why both Henry Evaluardjuk and Pauta Saila dominated the “bear market” for decades. Carved from a gorgeous piece of mottled serpentine, this wonderfully inquisitive and corpulent specimen is depicted in a decidedly anthropomorphic pose, reminding us very much of the stellar whale bone Gesturing Bear offered in our December 2022 auction (Lot 136).