Lot 67
LUKE ANGUHADLUQ (1895-1982) QAMANI’TUAQ (BAKER LAKE)
On the Land, 1970 (1971 #29)
Printmaker:: THOMAS NAKTURALIK MANNIK (1948-) QAMANI’TUAQ (BAKER LAKE)
stonecut print, 30/50, 25 x 22 in (63.5 x 55.9 cm)
30/50

Provenance
Private Collection, California;
by descent to the present Private Collection, California.

The original drawing for On the Land dates from c. 1967. Its animal imagery — geese, fish, and caribou — is the same as would dominate Anguhadluq’s works for the rest of his career but the drawing’s composition and especially its style differ from those of his later works. Anguhadluq’s animals in On the Land are drawn with agitated lines done in pen and ink (rather than the more usual graphite), and admirably translated to print by Thomas Mannik. The animals are depicted with minimal detail (interestingly, reminiscent of the style of his Cape Dorset contemporary Parr), but their salient characteristics are present — the bills and elongated necks of the geese, the curving antlers of the large caribou, and the fins of the fish — are unmistakable. We can see how the artist was beginning to invent the “multiple perspective” view of the world that would become a hallmark of his style. As our eyes adjust to Anguhadluq’s vision we read its clear landscape setting, a rarity in the artist’s early works. The vertical line, representing a river, flourishes into two “u” shapes that connect “land masses” on either side, each of which supports a caribou. On the left side of this waterline are marching geese, feasting on fish, while on the right we see a self-contained scene of more geese swimming on a lake.

References

Image reproduced in Ernst Roch, ed., Arts of the Eskimo: Prints, (Signum Press/Oxford Univ. Press, 1974), p. 198-9, p. 199. The pen and ink drawing for On the Land is reproduced in Jean Blodgett, Tuu’luq / Anguhadluq (Winnipeg, MB: The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1976), no. 54, unpaginated; also in Cynthia Waye Cook, From the Centre: The Drawings of Luke Anguhadluq, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1993), no. 5, p. 63, and elsewhere.