Sculpture has been created in the small Arctic Quebec community of Salluit since the early 1950s, but in the period 1952 to 1957, there was an outpouring of quality work by both men and women, as encouraged by the Hudson’s Bay Company manager at that time. Tivi Ilisituk was one of the most talented carvers to emerge from this period, and he continued to carve in later years as well. Unlike most of the early Salluit sculptures, those by Tivi Ilisituk are dynamic in form. Heads and bodies turn dramatically, creating a circular movement around the works. Folds in the clothing are accentuated and continue the swinging rhythms. The large form of the mother’s body and parka give the work a heroic spirit and it becomes an idealized image of strength and protection.

George Swinton moved to Winnipeg in 1954 to serve on the faculty of the School of Art at the University of Manitoba. He had emigrated from Vienna in 1937; studied at the Art Students League in New York; was artist-in-residence at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario; and worked as a curator at the National Gallery of Canada and the Saskatoon Art Centre. He had bought his first Inuit carving when in Montreal in 1950, and this early interest soon lead to him assisting the Hudson Bay Company with assessing carvings after they arrived in Winnipeg in crates from the company’s Arctic trading posts. His passion for Inuit art was reinforced by his first trip to the arctic, to Inukjuak, in 1957. He wrote two books that are known to every student and collector of Inuit art: Eskimo Sculpture/Sculpture esquimaude (1965) and Sculpture of the Eskimo (1972).

In 1960 the Gallery made a serious commitment to collecting Inuit art when it purchased 139 major sculptures from Swinton. In 1976 the WAG purchased a second collection from George Swinton consisting of over 900 sculptures, prints, and drawings. An exhibition of the Swinton Collection was held several years later, in 1987, with an accompanying catalogue. In 1989, a further collection of 85 artworks was donated to the gallery.