It is natural that people may have assumed that the strongest works from the Collection of John and Joyce Price were behind us. This Pauta should put that notion to rest.

Once in the Klamer Family Collection and later acquired by John and Joyce Price, this Dancing Polar Bear has now been in two of the most formidable private collections of Inuit art. Its return to auction is, therefore, no ordinary reappearance but signals the arrival of a work with a distinguished collecting history, now poised to begin its third chapter.

There is, perhaps, no other artist so closely associated with the polar bear as Pauta. Though he produced works of many different subjects, in both two and three dimensions, his lifelong engagement with the polar bear allowed him to explore it with unmatched familiarity, freedom, and force.

Though the origins of the term “dancing bear” remain somewhat obscure, it may well be tied to the example presented to Canada House in London in 1967 as a Centennial gift from members of the Canadian Women’s Club in London. Meant for permanent display, the sculpture was warmly praised by then High Commissioner Charles Ritchie as a “magnificent expression of wit and genius,” and was said to deserve “an honored place in Canada House” [1].

Though the present work was made some years later, the description “a magnificent expression of wit and genius” remains entirely apt. To our eye, few other works show more clearly why Pauta’s dancing bears became canonical in Canadian art. The form of this fellow is radically economical, yet nothing feels abbreviated. Each element has been pared down and amplified at once, so that the bear reads instantly and monumentally.

What one relishes most in Pauta’s finest dancing bears is present here in abundance. First, there is the sheer triumph of balance. The animal has all the bodily force one would expect, yet Pauta coaxes the bear into a pose that ought to topple: the body pitched upward, the weight thrown onto a single leg, the other lifted high, and resolves it all with complete assurance.

Just as impressive is that this dancing bear is fully persuasive from every side. There is no secondary or merely functional view. As one moves around it, the broad planes of the deep honey-brown Markham Bay stone catch and hold light differently, and the asymmetry of the pose keeps the composition alive. Never fixed, never inert.

Pauta once remarked to Bernadette Driscoll, “At times I feel like keeping some of my carvings. In fact, I have even said good-bye to some [2].” We know intimately just what he meant. As this work moves on to its third generation of collectors, it will be one we

bid farewell to with real reluctance and, ideally, one last pet.

1. The Canadian Press story enjoyed wide national circulation, appearing in no fewer than 25 newspapers, among them the Calgary Herald (8 July 1967), Edmonton Journal (8 July 1967), The Ottawa Citizen (10 July 1967), The Toronto Star (11 July 1967), and The Vancouver Sun (11 July 1967).

2. Pauta Saila to Bernadette Driscoll, in Uumajut: Animal Imagery in Inuit Art, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1985), p. 46