Untitled (Hunter and Two Caribou)

Description

Untitled (Hunter and Two Caribou) by Luke Anguhadluq – Inuit Art – Baker Lake c. 1969 original drawing presented by DaVic Gallery of Native Canadian Arts.

Condition:          Overall very good condition – some paper handling marks caused by the artist.  Ghost images from drawing lines made by the artist when drawing on a paper over this paper (picture # 5).  Graphite smudged at both limb ends of the bow also caused by the artist while drawing this piece.  This is all intentionally left as-is to maintain the integrity and originality of the effort of the effort of the artist, including mistakes and oversights.  Two tapes top margin of the paper, verso from previous framing.  Professional restoration not recommended as this would erase traces remaining of the artist handling this paper.

Provenance: Wagonfeld Collection; Feheley Fine Arts; Jack and Sheila Butler Collection

Exhibited and published: Loveland Museum Gallery, Survival: Inuit Art (2004) p. 40; Feheley Fine Arts, The Butler Collection (1999), p. 93; Cynthia Waye Cook, From the Centre: The Drawings of Luke Anguhadluq (1993) cat. 14. Also exhibited: Nickle Arts Museum, University of Calgary, Baker Lake Drawings from the Jack and Sheila Butler Collection (1991).

In his commentary in the Feheley catalogue Jack Butler describes how the mixed perspectives and relative sizes of things made perfect sense from Anguhadluq’s point of view. The bow and arrow (and thus the hunter) are positioned facing the caribou, while the caribou are shown from the hunter’s perspective. The large size of the bow conveys its importance to the hunter, while the caribou are portrayed as fat with large antlers (see p. 92).

Description by Artist:     No description by artist found.

Notes from DaVic Gallery:    In order to represent the world as he viewed it in different perspectives Luke would rotate the paper as he drew.  In this superb early drawing we can see two different perspectives where the two caribou appear to be from the perspective of the hunter himself, and the hunter is viewed from a witness perspective from one side.  It is very interesting to see his decision to not use color and how primitive or childlike his images appear, especially the hunter and his bow and arrow where both bow and arrow are significantly larger than the hunter.  It feels as if the hunter takes a secondary role and the main interaction is between bow and arrow and the two caribou.  The hunter is only the one needed to pull the bow string.  The arrow seems enormous and prominent as well as the bow.  In fact, it can be seen how Luke attempted and failed drawing the hunter’s image before then erasing it and drawing over on top again a smaller image than the first attempt.

It is clear how this story develops where the hunter has managed to position himself at very close range to the grazing caribou.  He has taken aim, stretched his bow string with arrow in place ready to release the arrow to hit the caribou that remains grazing and unaware of what is going on.

Luke’s pencil strokes are firm and strong that can be felt and seen on the reverse side of the paper and on the drawing itself we can see the ghost images of the drawing done on the paper that may have been over this one (picture # 5).  Surely there might be another drawing where the ghost images created by this one may be seen too.

For size comparison with letter size sheet, please reference picture # 4