#18 • Claire Fejes Sheshalik Series Oil Painting

Part of September 2025 Premier Auction (live auction by Alaska Premier Auctions & Appraisals)

High bid $3,300.00

Status: Sold

Category: Art

An original oil painting by Alaskan artist Claire Fejes (1920-1998), depicting an Alaska Native figure in a parka seated near a vertical pole, with a rack of drying fish above. Executed in simplified, block-like forms with strong contrasts of icy blue, green, and ochre, the composition reflects Fejes’s modernist style and her emphasis on dignity in everyday life. The subject and date suggest a connection to Fejes’s "Sheshalik" (Sesaulik) painting series, created following her 1958 stay at an Inupiat whaling camp. From that experience, she produced twenty oil paintings, known collectively as the "Sesaulik 20" which were later exhibited at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle and the Roko Gallery in New York. While most works in that group are documented as oils on masonite, the iconography and period of this canvas place it in close relation to that series, raising the likelihood that it may have been part of, or directly associated with, the "Sesaulik 20". Extensive writing en verso bears the inscription "Property of the Traveler’s Inn, Fairbanks," a known venue where Fejes displayed her earliest works before opening Alaska House Gallery in 1964. This mark of provenance situates the painting within the proximity of her first public exhibitions in Fairbanks. The painting has also been identified in supporting documentation and appears in the documentary Claire Fejes: The Gauguin of the Arctic (05:48), which includes slides of her "Sheshalik" works, and again in Claire Fejes, Alaskan Artist (13:03), a documentary film. Taken together, these details strongly suggest that this canvas is either one of, or closely related to, her early works from the "Sesaulik 20" series. Signed in the lower right corner, the piece is housed in a frame measuring approximately 22.5" x 28.5" overall, with a sight view of 17.75" x 23.5".