Qalasirssuaq (Erasmus Augustine Kallihirua), circa 1832/5-1856

A half-length portrait by an unidentified British artist showing the sitter in two poses, wearing a black jacket with a white shirt and wing collar and a black tie. On the left he is facing slightly to the right and looks forwards to meet the gaze of the viewer, with his left hand raised into view and lightly clenched. In the portrait on the right, he is shown in right profile, facing to the right and looking straight ahead.

Qalasirssuaq (1834–1856) was a young Inuit hunter from Perlernerit (Cape York) in today’s Kalaallit Nunaat (also known as Greenland). His name is variously recorded in historical sources as Erasmus York, Caloosa, Calahierna, Kalli, York, Kallihirua, Kalersik, Ka’le’sik, Qalaseq, Kalesing and Qalaherhuaq. This catalogue entry uses Qalasirssuaq (applying the Kalaallisut -suaq ending), but it has been suggested that Qalaherriaq (using the Inughuit -herriaq ending) more likely reflects how he would have pronounced his name.

Qalasirssuaq was brought involuntarily to Britain with Captain Erasmus Ommanney’s expedition vessel, HMS ‘Assistance’, in 1851. Ommanney and his crew were part of Captain Horatio Austin’s 1850–1851 search expedition for Sir John Franklin, whose two ships – ‘Erebus’ and ‘Terror’ – had disappeared in the Canadian Arctic during their search for the North-West Passage in 1845. Qalasirssuaq agreed to serve as a guide for Ommanney in order to disprove an accusation that his people, the Inughuit, had killed Franklin’s men. After leading the ‘Assistance’ north along the west coast of Kalaallit Nunaat, he expected to be returned to his home. Instead, he was made first to winter with the expedition and then to travel with them to Britain in autumn 1851. Ommanney claimed that poor ice conditions rendered it impractical to return Qalasirssuaq to his family.

In November 1851, at the suggestion of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Admiralty placed Qalasirssuaq in St Augustine's Missionary College in Canterbury, where he learnt to read and write, had religious instruction, and trained as a tailor. In 1852–53, he helped Captain John Washington revise his 'Esquimaux and English Vocabulary' (1850), a handbook for Arctic expeditions, and he was baptised as Erasmus Augustine Kallihirua in November 1853.

In autumn 1855, Qalasirssuaq was sent for further religious training at the College of the Theological Institution (later Queen's College) at St John's, Newfoundland, with the intention that he would later go on to act as a missionary in Inuit communities. However, only eight months into his stay at St John’s, he died from lung tuberculosis.

It is not known exactly when this portrait of Qalasirssuaq was produced, nor who the artist was. It may have been commissioned during the sitter’s time in Britain by Ommanney, who donated the painting to the Royal Navy Museum at the Royal Navy College in Greenwich sometime between 1877 and 1902. The portrait then transferred to the National Maritime Museum in 1938.

The double representation (en face and in profile) of Qalasirssuaq in this portrait is highly unconventional for European portraiture of the time. In an article published in ‘Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies’ in 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2023.2169626), Ingeborg Høvik and Axel Jeremiassen suggest that the portrait’s unusual form may have been intended to recall works of nineteenth-century racial science, in which European authors attempted to classify people within racialised hierarchies via reference to differences in facial features. These theories were often illustrated with multiple views of human heads, both frontal and profile. In echoing this imagery, the portrait was perhaps responding to Qalasirssuaq’s reception in the Britain press, which focussed primarily on classifications of race.

Qalasirssuaq’s representation in European clothing with cropped hair may have been intended by the artist and commissioner of the portrait to manifest the supposedly ‘civilising’ effect of Christianity and British influence on Indigenous peoples. At the same time, while the production of painting is inextricably bound up with unequal power relations, Qalasirssuaq’s own agency in shaping his representation should be acknowledged: it is possible that he was knowingly performing the character that the painter required of him. The small corpus of surviving writings and drawings by Qalasirssuaq indicate an ambivalent attitude towards British naval officers and his stay in England.

For all its complexities, the portrait remains significant as one of very few paintings depicting the numerous individual Inuit who partook in British Arctic expeditions, including as guides, translators, tailors, seamstresses, mapmakers and hunters.

This catalogue entry was revised in April 2026 with reference to Ingeborg Høvik & Axel Jeremiassen (2023), ‘Traces of an Arctic Voice: The Portrait of Qalaherriaq’, Interventions, 25:7, 975–1003.