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@mdstamper.bsky.socialOct 16, 2026, 6:19 AM

“Portrait of Caubvick, an Inuit Woman from Labrador” by Unknown artist – Oil on canvas / c. 1772 – Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons of England (London, UK) #WomenInArt #Inuk #HunterianMuseum #art #artText #arte #InuitWomen #LabradorInuit #IndigenousWomen #portraitofawoman #1770sArt

A young Inuk woman stands half-length against a muted landscape as she e turns to our left, looking beyond the picture, while her forearms cross calmly in front of her. Her warm brown garment has broad sleeves and substantial fur around the shoulders, and long strands of tiny beads descend on either side of her face. Her dark hair is drawn back beneath a beige band. Faint lines running from her lower lip across her chin depict facial tattooing. The unidentified artist models her face softly, with flushed cheeks and soft eyes, while subdued greens, browns, and blue-gray sky suggest a northern landscape beyond her. Caubvick was a Labrador Inuk who traveled to England in 1772 with English trader George Cartwright. She was accompanied by her husband Tooklavinia, his brother Attuiock, Attuiock’s wife Ickongoque, and their young daughter Ickeuna. The five became objects of considerable curiosity in Britain’s social and scientific circles. Both Caubvick and Attuiock sat for full-length portraits by Nathaniel Dance in 1773. Four members of the group died after contracting smallpox, but Caubvick returned to Labrador, although the surviving historical record leaves her eventual fate uncertain. Even the actual identification of the woman in this painting has a complicated history. The Hunterian now titles her Caubvick, but the portrait has previously been identified as other Labrador Inuit women, including Mikak and Ickongoque. Recent scholarship still describes the attribution as uncertain rather than settled. That distinction matters as the painting preserves an individual presence, but much of the documentation surrounding her was created by Europeans who classified, collected, and renamed Indigenous people within their own systems. What remains striking is the specificity of the woman herself. Her hairstyle, beadwork, clothing, tattooing, folded arms, and distant gaze give the 1772 portrait a presence that exceeds its history as an ethnographic curiosity.