Untitled (Inuit Bible Class)

Like many Inuit artists born in the late nineteenth century, Ennutsiak rendered a number of traditional Inuit lifestyle subjects in his depictions of small groups of people engaged in everyday activities. Ennutsiak’s small-scale stone carvings are almost all little “tableaux” works, comprising seated or crouching figures arranged on a base, engaged in a communal activity. By the early twentieth century Inuit activities on southern Baffin Island, as well as in several other areas of the Canadian Arctic, would have included attending religious services in small Christian churches, where available, or simply in a tent or igloo, thus for Ennutsiak, this was part of his community’s “traditions.”