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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Alan Boxer Collection of Australian Indigenous Art
• Sale Date:
  17 Mar 2015 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  8
• Lot Description:
  Yirawala
  (1903–1976)
  Lumahlumah (circa 1970)
  natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark
  63 x 31 cm
  bears artist name and title verso
• Provenance:
  Sandra Le Brun Holmes, Darwin; The Alan Boxer Collection, Canberra
• References:
  A number of related and similar depictions of Lumahlumah by Yirawala in the collection of the National Gallery are illustrated in Holmes, S. Le Brun, Yirawala: Painter of the Dreaming, Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1994, Plates 1, 5, 6, 8-11. See also Caruana, W., A. Duff, H. Morphy and L. Taylor, Old Masters: Australia's great bark artists, Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2013, page 48, for another version of a dismembered Lumahlumah.
• Notes:
  Alan Boxer's collection of Aboriginal art focused firmly on the art of the desert. He had a fondness for the aesthetic and the colour of desert designs. Nonetheless, he did collect a small number of bark paintings including this, his second bark acquisition. Boxer purchased Lumahlumah, c.1970, in the early 1970s in Sydney, from the artist's patron Sandra Le Brun Holmes. Coincidentally, this was at the same time the National Gallery of Australia was negotiating with Holmes to purchase a large collection of Yirawala's paintings under a policy to acquire in depth the works of outstanding Australian artists (others in this category, such as Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Fred Williams were also collected by Boxer). The Gallery's subsequent purchase of 139 bark paintings by Yirawala includes many that depict or refer to Lumahlumah, the sacred powers (mardayin) that he unleashed, and the ceremonies with which he is associated. Lumahlumah is one of the most important ancestors of the Bininj peoples of western Arnhem Land. There are several variations of the chronicles about Lumahlumah but in essence he is considered to be a giant, even a large sea creature, that came from the east with his two wives and Ngalyod the Rainbow Serpent. He carried with him a woven dilly bag that contained sacred objects. He laid down the laws that govern society, taught people to perform sacred ceremonies, and revealed his sacred objects. Lumahlumah exerted his immense power over people. But Lumahlumah's is also a story about the ability of power to corrupt, and while he prospered, the people starved. In time, the ancestors of the Kunwinjku and Kuninjku sought their revenge. They laid a trap for Lumahlumah, surrounded him by fire and speared him mercilessly. Lumahlumah begged for his life with a promise to teach people to paint the ritual rarrk cross-hatched patterns, such as those that appear on his body in this painting. The people however dismembered his body and took his bones as ritual objects. Yirawala was a master of creating dazzling patterns of rarrk that embodied the presence of ancestral forces within a painting, as in this animated depiction of Lumahlumah in full ceremonial regalia. Through his authority to introduce innovations in bark painting, such as his variations on rarrk patterns to enhance the brilliance of a painting, Yirawala was a major influence on successive generations of bark painters from western Arnhem Land. The white ground of the bark is also a device Yirawala introduced to further enhance the lustrous quality of the painted surface.. Wally Caruana
• Estimate:
  A$8,000 - 12,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.