ALBERT NAMATJIRA

Private collection, Adelaide
Elder Fine Art, Adelaide, 27 November 2005, lot 101
Private collection, Melbourne
Australian & International Fine Art, Deutscher-Menzies, Sydney, 6 December 2006, lot 61
Private collection; purchased from the above

Very good condition, behind glass
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Albert Namatjira is a most important figure in twentieth century Australian art, a Western Arrernte man who adopted and adapted the materials and methods of settler art in order both to honour his land and to negotiate a place in non-Aboriginal society. His unique, personal approach to watercolour technique and his exotic 'outback' subject matter became immensely popular within white Australia during the 1940s and 1950s, and were the foundation of a school of Indigenous painting which survives and thrives to the present day.  Although this very popularity led to Namatjira's achievement being discounted by art historians and curators during the 1960s and 1970s, his reputation has been re-examined and rehabilitated in more recent years, particularly in the light of the post-Papunya Tula Aboriginal art 'renaissance' and the cultural politics of reconciliation. Since the mid-1980s three biographies have been published and three exhibitions mounted by public galleries which commemorate and celebrate the artist's life and work.¹

Not surprisingly, Namatjira's earliest watercolours were mostly of Ntaria, of places immediately nearby the Finke River Mission at Hermannsburg, where he grew up. However, he also made regular journeys outside his traditional tribal lands, notably to the mission's ration depot at Haasts Bluff (Ikuntji), in Pintupi country. Alison French has noted that 'the iconic image of a discrete peak or monolith rising from the surrounding plain, visible from a vast distance, held a particular attraction for Namatjira'²  and Haast's Bluff, with its distinctive three peaks - Anjali, Apilkiri and Ulumpawarru - was to become, like Mt Hermannsburg (Ljalkaindirma) or Mt Sonder (Rutjipma), a favourite site. Indeed, the very first Indigenous painting acquired by an Australian public art gallery (as opposed to a social science museum) was a watercolour by Namatjira related to the present work: Illum-baura [sic] (Haasts Bluff), Central Australia was purchased by the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1939. 

While the same size and subject as the Adelaide picture, the present work is a later and altogether more polished work. It is a fine example of Namatjira's mature landscape method: crisp mauve and violet tonal construction in the distant mountains; a zone of softer, blur-spotted grey-green scrub in the mid-ground; and foreground detail (in other instances the celebrated ghost gums, here a low screen of ochre rocks) which links the viewer to the ground, to the personal experience of site and sight.

 1. John Brackenreg, Central Australian artist: Albert Namatjira, Legend Press, Sydney, 1984; Nadine Amadio, Albert Namatjira: the life and work of an Australian painter, McMillan, Melbourne, 1986; Andrew McKenzie, Albert Namatjira, 1902-1959: a biographical sketch, Oz Publishing, Brisbane, 1988. The key exhibitions are Albert Namatjira, Araluen Arts Centre, 1984; The heritage of Namatjira, Tandanya, Adelaide, and national tour through Australian Exhibitions Touring Agency, 1991-93; and Seeing the centre: the art of Albert Namatjira 1902-1959, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and national tour, 2002-03.
2.  Alison French, Seeing the centre: the art of Albert Namatjira 1902-1959 (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2002, p. 15