Lot 46
JOSEPHIE POOTOOGOOK (1887-1958) KINNGAIT (CAPE DORSET)
Joyfully I See Ten Caribou, 1959 #29

Printmaker: KANANGINAK POOTOOGOOK, R.C.A. (1935-2010) KINNGAIT (CAPE DORSET
linocut and stencil print, 21/50, 12 x 17 in (30.5 x 43.2 cm)
21/50

Provenance
Private Collection, Yukon Territory.

Like Niviaqsi (see lot 12), Pootoogook was approached by James Houston to gain community support for the budding printmaking program in Kinngait. Fifteen of the forty prints in the 1959 collection were based on designs by these two artists. In her article in the Summer 1975 edition of Canadian Forum, Dorothy Eber described that the printmakers Osuitok Ipeelee, Kananginak Pootoogook and Iyola Kingwatsiak “all gave colourful accounts of what they claimed was the first print, Joyfully I See Ten Caribou, a combination lino cut and stencil” (p. 31). That claim has since been disputed but the print still stands as one of the finest and enduring icons of the inaugural Cape Dorset collection. Here, warm grey stenciled areas denote the man’s parka and frame the dense black linocut elements that describe the hunter’s friendly and confident visage. We are captivated by his smiling eyes and carefully delineated toothy grin. The emphatic gesture of his hands, a signal to his fellow hunters that he has spotted caribou, are turned out to expose his palm lines, which beautifully mimic the shapes of antlers.



References
This image has been widely reproduced including in: James Houston, Eskimo Prints, (Don Mills, ON: Longman Canada Ltd., 1971) p. 82 p. 33; pl. 195, unpaginated; Dorothy Eber, “Looking for the Artists of Dorset in Eskimo Art,” Canadian Forum, v. 52 (July/August 1972), p. 12-16. Carol Finley, Art of the Far North: Inuit Sculpture, Drawing, and Printmaking, (Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Company, 1998), p. 49, fig. 18, as “Kananginak Pootoogook” [sic]; Leslie Boyd Ryan, Cape Dorset Prints: A Retrospective (Pomegranate, 2007) p. 76, and in the National Museum of Man travelling exhibition catalogue The Inuit Print (NMM, 1977) p. 54. Also illustrated (along with Pootoogook’s original drawing) in Christine Lalonde and Leslie Boyd Ryan, Uuturautiit: Cape Dorset Celebrates 50 Years of Printmaking, exh. cat., (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2009), p. 37, cat. 37.