MARION TUU'LUQ, R.C.A. (1910-2002) QAMANI'TUAQ (BAKER LAKE)
Trumpeter Swans, 1973
duffle, felt, embroidery floss, and cotton thread, 47.75 x 48.25 in (121.4 x 123 cm)
unsigned.

Provenance
Collection of John and Joyce Price, Seattle.

Exhibitions

Baker Lake, Adult Education Centre, Baker Lake Wall Hangings and Vests, 1973;
Winnipeg, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Tuu’luq / Anguhadluq, 10 September - 7 November 1976, cat. 33, as Birds and Men;
Toronto, Textile Museum of Canada, A Stitch in Time: The History and Aesthetics of Baker Lake Wall Hangings, Textile Museum of Canada,May-November, 1997;
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, Marion Tuu’luq, travelling exhibition, 11 October 2002 - 12 January 2003; Winnipeg, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 21 August - 12 October 2003; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1 November 2003 - 11 January 2004; Guelph, ON, MacDonald Stewart Art Centre. 20 May - 29 July 2009, cat. no 6.

Publications
Stanley Zazelenchuk, “Art Show” in Keewatin Echo, (Jan. 1974), ill. p. 2;
Jean Blodgett, Tuu’luq / Anguhadluq, exh. cat. (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1976), cat. 33, as Birds and Men, unpaginated;
Marie Routledge and Marie Bouchard, Marion Tuu’luq, exh. cat., (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2002) cat. 6, reproduced p. 55, p. 34-35, also reproduced as a detail on p. 101.

One of Marion Tuu’luq’s great masterpieces from early in her career, Trumpeter Swans dates from 1973, one year before she created Crowd of People (see First Arts, Toronto, 14 June 2022, Lot 36), and like that work was shown in the landmark exhibition Marion Tuu’luq which began its tour at the National Gallery in Ottawa in 2002. While Trumpeter Swans is similarly sensuous and decorative overall, and marvelously stitched with brilliant, painterly colour effects, its imagery, composition and even its stitchery are very different. Marie Bouchard’s incisive observations in the National Gallery catalogue help us understand how Tuu’luq’s style, her thought processes, and importantly her memories combined to create this fantastic image:

“[Tuu’luq’s] compositions are based on repetitions of format, motif, and colour that are as rhythmic as the seasons. All explore the simple yet intricate aboriginal notion of regeneration, a rebirth that contributes to a sense of place, history, and endurance. Perhaps this is why Tuu’luq approaches with such intensity and care the subject of the trumpeter swan. The long migratory flight of these large birds from as far away as Texas and Chesapeake Bay never failed to inspire her. Sightings, usually in mid-May, were increasingly rare by the 1950s [...] In Trumpeter Swans ... Tuu’luq recreates their nesting grounds in the marshy waters and lush grassy patches of the low tundra ... Sea gulls heckle nearby. The faces are people lying on the ground watching the swans, she says. It is clearly a treasured moment, a privileged communion with nature [...]. The scene is compressed, elegant, richly tactile, and contained within a lively border of hummocks densely embroidered with a colourful outburst of new vegetation" [1].

Marion Tuu’luq’s approach here is experiential rather than narrative. The artist invites us into an imagined world based on memory and populated not just by birds and humans, but also visual sensations triggered by shapes and textures and colours. The spectacularly embroidered border of hummocks brilliantly conjures up the gently rolling terrain of the tundra. The stitchery is incredibly complex and subtle, with sudden colour changes that seem arbitrary until we realize that they are mirrored on the opposite corners. Why? For the pure joy of it! The inner border, representing the lower wetlands, shimmers with completely different stitchery, framing a jumble of swimming swans and other birds that interweave not only with each other but also with freeform abstract shapes. The two human faces floating in the centre of the composition and apparently mesmerized by what they see, are likely a young Tuul’uq and possibly a sibling or close friend. The effect is immersive and almost hallucinatory. Absolutely magnificent.

Marion Tuu’luq was born in the early 1900s and lived a traditional Inuit life for five decades before she and her second husband Luke Anguhadluq moved into the community of Baker Lake in 1961. Tuu’luq began working with textiles in 1966, shortly after her cousin and best friend Oonark had done so, and became one of Canada’s foremost textile artists.

1. Bouchard, Marion Tuu’luq, 2002, pp. 34-35.

References: For more information and other masterpieces by the artist see Jean Blodgett, Tuu'luq / Anguhadluq: An Exhibition of Works by Marion Tuu'luq and Luke Anguhadluq of Baker Lake, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1976), cat. 33 (as Birds and Men); Marie Bouchard and Marie Routledge, Marion Tuu’luq, (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2002); Katharine W. Fernstrom and Anita E. Jones, Northern Lights: Inuit Textile Art from the Canadian Arctic, (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1994).