219 Unknown Heiltsuk Artist w LATE 19TH CENTURY
Heiltsuk Chair carved and painted cedar wood sculpture, inscribed on a plaque Chair, Hyda [sic] Indians NW Coast of America and inscribed on the underside of the chair E4269, circa 1880 – 1890 37 3/4 x 23 1/4 x 18 in, 95.9 x 59 x 45.7 cm Prov e n a n c e
Pitt-Rivers Collection, England, circa 1860 Roy G. Cole Collection, Rosseau, Ontario Sold sale of Sotheby’s, New York, May 18 – 19, 2000, lot 717 Private Collection, Tucson, Arizona Donald Ellis Gallery, Ontario Equinox Gallery, Vancouver Peter and Joanne Brown Collection, Vancouver
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Uniquely and fully carved with animal motifs on most of its components, this chair is made in a style imitating, or influenced by, the overall form of early-nineteenth-century English Regency furniture. Its carved motifs, however, reveal this chair to be the work of a Heiltsuk (Bella Bella) artist of the latter decades of the nineteenth century. The style of the carved seat, back, arms, legs and stretchers have features comparable to a number of Heiltsuk carved figures now located in museum and private collections, most of which have yet to be specifically attributed to one or more named Heiltsuk carvers. The chair is especially distinguished by its deeply carved seat. The seat represents what is likely a sculpin, characterized by a broad, toothed mouth, a horn-like spine on either side of the head, a series of spines along each fin, and the body with tail fin. Its mouth is centred on the bowed front edge of the seat, the facial features are carved on the seat’s upper front surface, and the fins and body (portrayed as a face) are arranged over the remaining seat in a split, bilateral fashion.