Seal Hunter from the Island of Pakri

This is one of the most significant works by Amandus Adamson, which featured on the cover of his 1955 exhibition catalogue. The sculpture completed in 1898 depicts the seal hunter Toomas Österberg from Adamson’s home island Pakri. When Adamson was on the island on summer holiday with brothers Kristjan and Paul Raud, Österberg’s net shed was used as a studio. In autumn, Adamson took the sculpted model with him and had it cast in bronze in St. Petersburg. He submitted the work to the spring exhibition of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1899, from where it moved on to the State Russian Museum (also in St. Petersburg). Over the years, a few other versions of the Seal Hunter have emerged: one was purchased by the State Art Museum of the Estonian SSR in a second-hand shop in Leningrad in 1977, another was found five years earlier on a farm near Kohtla-Järve, where it had ended up after geologists taking soil samples had found it buried underground. The latter version was taken to the Estonian National Museum.  

The work in the Enn Kunila Art Collection was put up for auction in New Jersey in the USA in the summer of 2024.

The precise number of Seal Hunter casts is impossible to determine because the whereabouts of the moulds are not known and Adamson himself is believed not to have kept count of the casts made. There are, however, certain differences between the different versions. For example, in this particular version of the sculpture the hook of the harpoon is pointed downward unlike in other versions and the wire around the harpoon is the lengthiest and with a complex composition. The location of the signature of the bronze casting workshop also differs.