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Artworks
ENNUTSIAK (1893-1967) IQALUIT (FROBISHER BAY)
Mother and Child, Sharing a Kunik, late 1950s or early 1960sstone, 3 x 2.75 x 2 in (7.6 x 7 x 5.1 cm)
unsigned.LOT 1
ESTIMATE: $3,000 — $5,000Further images
While Ennutsiak’s best known carvings often gather many figures into scenes of communal activity, as in the portaging scene in Lot 41, he was no less compelling at the scale...While Ennutsiak’s best known carvings often gather many figures into scenes of communal activity, as in the portaging scene in Lot 41, he was no less compelling at the scale of a single, intimate encounter. Here, working with rudimentary hand tools, Ennutsiak gives us a young woman drawing a baby close and giving the child a kunik, pressing her nose and upper lip to the baby’s head and breathing in the scent of skin and hair. An alert observer of northern life and an astute maker with an eye toward his southern market, Ennutsiak must have understood the appeal of this particular expression of affection, unfamiliar to many of his patrons yet instantly legible in its tenderness. The small scale of the work heightens its charm, compressing all that softness and closeness into an object that can be cupped and admired in the palm.
ND
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by a Private Collection, Toronto;
Walker's, Ottawa, July 2020, Lot 42;
Acquired from the above by the present Private Collection, Montreal.1of 167
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