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Very fine wood carving by Quebec artist Jean Baptiste Coté ( 1832-1907)
Caricature of a priest
This early work by him was probably made c.1868-80.
 
Representing a caricature of a priest (it had a pointed arm and finger now gone), it combines two major influences of the artist: his taste for caricature (he was one of the first cartoonist in Canada for political newspapers from 1865 to 1868) and his agility to carve ship’s figurehead.
 
Steel-hulled ship construction came to take over from those of wood in the early 1870s,  and Côté turned his skills elsewhere: furniture, signs,  cigar store Indians , religious carvings, hearses, tombstones, and others.