When the Cape Dorset arts advisor Terry Ryan handed him a large-format sketch pad and pencils in the spring of 1961, Parr was almost seventy years old. (He was still living at Tessikakjuak Lake northwest of Kinngait, and finally moved into the community later that year due to ill health.) Parr probably had little knowledge of Cape Dorset graphic art, let alone drawing in general; he literally learned to make images from scratch, so it should be no surprise that his very early efforts look like the drawings of young children.

Three Figures is one of his very first drawings and is noticeably even more simplified than the lovely Men with Geese, Dog, Seals, and Whale dated July 1961 (see First Arts, 4 December 2023, Lot 53). The figures’ tent-like bodies dwarf their small heads and minuscule limbs and seem to float like ghostly apparitions on the page; the smallest one even lacks facial features and feet. The clothing resembles dresses, but the figures might in fact depict a small family. Already recognizable are the trademark dot-and-dash facial features that Parr would continue to employ, as well as the “lines of division” the artist invented and would keep using to structure his human and animal figures. Marvelous.