Latcholassie Akesuk (1919-2000), son of one of the first recognized sculptors from Cape Dorset, Tudlik, came to prominence in the late 1960s for his elegant, minimalist sculptures of animals that evoked organic, modernist sculpture. He gained name recognition in the late 1960s as his work was sought by major galleries of Inuit art including the Lippel Gallery, Montreal, the Robertson Gallery, Ottawa, and the Isaacs’ Gallery in Toronto. By 1969, critic Irene Heywood wrote in the pages of the Montreal Gazette that Latcholassie was among an elite group of “gifted artists among … Eskimo craftsman,” being recognized as “leaders with individual qualities and styles” (June 28, 1969: 51). This carving of a seal is a fine example from Latcholassie’s early phase, rendered in the classic “green stone” found around Cape Dorset. It was purchased in 1969, the year before he received the second prize at the Northwest Territories’ Centennial exhibition in Yellowknife, an award given by Queen’s Elizabeth, and on the cusp of his ascension to the upper echelons of the Inuit art world. The sculpture – sleek, minimal and highly evocative of a seal – demonstrates the great diversity of artistic approaches in the Canadian Arctic in the mid twentieth century. It marks a significant moment in the history of Inuit art when artists, like Latcholassie, broke out of the ethnographic mold to share their own expressive, unique, and personal visions of what Inuit art can be.