Edward Curtis Photogravure - "The Whaler - Makah"

About Auction

Live

Indigenous Art - Ralph T. Coe Center, Santa F...

By Artemis Fine Arts

Aug 22, 2025

Set Reminder 2025-08-22 10:00:00 2025-08-22 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Indigenous Art - Ralph T. Coe Center, Santa Fe, NM https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/artemis-gallery/indigenous-art---ralph-t-coe-center-santa-fe-nm-20324
Featuring works of art from the Ralph T. Coe Center for the Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a non-profit focused on promoting Indigenous Arts globally. All proceeds from the sale of these items will support future grants to Rehoming Program participants. Artemis Fine Arts info@artemisfinearts.com

View Full Catalog (452)

• Lot Description
  Edward Sheriff Curtis (American, 1868-1952). "Whaler - Makah" photogravure on wood board, copyright 1915. Cloaked in the heavy drape of a bearskin cape, Wilson Parker of the Makah Nation stands barefoot upon a stony beach, harpoon in hand, seal-skin floats trailing like sinewy extensions of the sea itself. This 1915 photogravure by Edward S. Curtis captures not only the physical presence of a whaler, but the enduring spirit of a maritime tradition forged over millennia on the storm-rimmed edge of the Pacific Northwest. The immense size of the harpoon-shaft, gripped firmly in Parker's hands, speaks to the traditional Makah technique of thrusting - not throwing - the weapon. Attached sealskin floats would have helped to exhaust the whale, slowing its movements as it fled through open water. The gear depicted here is both functional and ceremonial, deeply embedded in a worldview where ocean, animal, and hunter are bound by ancestral knowledge. Size: 11.25" W x 15.25" H (28.6 cm x 38.7 cm)
  
  For the Makah, whale hunting was never merely subsistence. It was sacred labor, providing not only meat and oil, but also bone, sinew, and gut - raw materials transformed into tools, thread, and ceremonial regalia. The 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay legally preserved the Makah right to hunt whales, even as the tribe ceded vast tracts of land to the United States. Yet by the 1920s, that promise stood hollow. Federal support waned, traditional practices were suppressed, and the Makah voluntarily ceased whaling, only to watch their cultural sovereignty challenged anew when gray whales were listed as endangered.
  
  Curtis' image, produced at the height of his North American Indian project, stands today as both artifact and elegy. It preserves a vision of strength, self-determination, and maritime mastery - one that endures. In 1999, after the delisting of the gray whale, the Makah launched a canoe and carried out a lawful whale hunt, reasserting their treaty rights and reviving ancestral practice in the face of intense scrutiny.
  
  "Whaler - Makah" is more than documentation. It is a moment stilled in halftone ink and handmade plate, but vibrating still with the power of tradition, land, and law. In Wilson Parker's stance we glimpse a nation that has never stopped fighting to return to the water.
  
  "Whaler - Makah" was part of Edward Curtis' epic 20 volume project to document Native Americans threatened by Westward expansion in the United States entitled "The North American Indian" (1907-1930) - a masterwork that experts have estimated would cost more than $35 million to create today.
  
  To learn more about Curtis' impressive undertaking, please read Gilbert King's article in Smithsonian Magazine. It opens as follows, with King brilliantly capturing Curtis' urgency and steadfast work ethic to document the indigenous peoples before expansion would potentially eclipse their cultures, "Year after year, he packed his camera and supplies - everything he'd need for months - and traveled by foot and by horse deep into the Indian territories. At the beginning of the 20th century, Edward S. Curtis worked in the belief that he was in a desperate race against time to document, with film, sound and scholarship, the North American Indian before white expansion and the federal government destroyed what remained of their natives' way of life. For thirty years, with the backing of men like J. Pierpont Morgan and former president Theodore Roosevelt, but at great expense to his family life and his health, Curtis lived among dozens of native tribes, devoting his life to his calling until he produced a definitive and unparalleled work, The North American Indian. The New York Herald hailed as 'the most ambitious enterprise in publishing since the production of the King James Bible.'" ("Edward Curtis' Epic Project to Photograph Native Americans" by Gilbert King - Smithsonian Magazine March 21, 2012)
  
  While Curtis has had his critics who have claimed that he romanticized the natives' existence, others have argued that he was ahead of his time and depicted them with dignity and respect. In her book entitled, "Shadow Catcher: The Life and Work of Edward S. Curtis" (Bison Books, 2005) Laurie Lawlor wrote, "When judged by the standards of his time, Curtis was far ahead of his contemporaries in sensitivity, tolerance and openness to Native American cultures and ways of thinking. He sought to observe and understand by going directly into the field."
  
  Provenance: private El Dorado Hills, California, USA collection
  
  All items legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and are guaranteed to be as described or your money back.
  
  A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids.
  
  We ship worldwide and handle all shipping in-house for your convenience.
  
  #195555

  Condition

  Adhered to wood backing. Small losses, chips, and peeling to peripheries. Some light stains and abrasions in areas, but imagery is still clear.
• Shipping Info

  • All shipping is handled in-house for your convenience. Your invoice from Artemis Fine Arts will include shipping calculation instructions. If in doubt, please ask before bidding for estimated shipping costs for individual items.

• Buyer's Premium
  • 28.50 %