“Barnabus muskoxen” were every bit as de rigueur as “Pauta bears” amongst savvy collectors over the decades, and like his Cape Dorset colleague, Arnasungaaq managed to satisfy market demands while avoiding the trap of becoming formulaic. Indeed, like Pauta, and arguably more so, Barnabus produced a wide variety of subjects including Arctic fauna, scenes from camp and family life, and even the occasional foray into the spirit world. In this fine sculpture, we love how Barnabus opted for the much harder monolithic approach of carving the drum and beater in high relief, rather than the more typical and expedient method of carving these ancillary elements from antler, ivory, wood, or skin and simply pegging them in. As such, the work is very much in keeping with the rugged Baker Lake sculptural aesthetic.

References: For fine examples of Arnasungaaq’s human figure sculptures, see George Swinton, Sculpture of the Inuit, (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992 ed. only), fig. 869, p. 260; Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Phoenix: Heard Museum, 2006), cat. 40, p. 43; and Marion Scott Gallery, Inspiration: Four Decades of Sculpture by Canadian Inuit, (Vancouver: Marion Scott Gallery, 1995), cat. 39.