ALBERT NAMATJIRA

Gifted in 1942 by the artist to Mr A. Latz, Head Stockman at the Finke River  Mission at Hermannsburg, and thence by descent

In excellent condition.
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Cf. For similar paintings of ghost gums see Ghost gum, Central Australia, c.1945, and Ghost gum, MacDonnell Ranges, c.1944, the former in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, in French, A., Seeing the Centre: The Art of Albert Namatjira, 1902-1959, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2002, pp.117 and 127 respectively, illus.; for another example of a painting by the artist on beanwood see: Mount Hermannsburg with Finke River Valley, c.1942-47, in the collection of the Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide, in French 2002, p. 60, illus.

A extremely rare painting on beanwood, the subject of this work is the ghost gum itself. In most of Namtajira's paintings, the artist placed a tree or trees on one side of the composition to produce the shallow space leading the eye to the scene beyond. In a number of paintings the trees themselves are the subjects. According to Alison French in the chapter Sapling and Survivors: portraits of trees in the catalogue Seeing the Centre: The Art of Albert Namatjira, 1902-1959, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2002, pp.116-29, the artist invests these images with symbols of the human condition: 'Trunks become torsos, branches arms. Bark functions for a tree in much the same way as skin does for a human being ...' French asserts that the eminent Australian art curator and historian Daniel Thomas based his 1979 revision of Namatjira's work 'on the expressive qualities of the format of the cropped tree'