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• Auction House:
  Deutscher and Hackett
• Sale Name:
  Important Australian + International Fine Art
• Sale Date:
  26 Aug 2015 ~ 7pm
• Lot #:
  86
• Lot Description:
  Albert Namatjira
  (1902 – 1959)
  Ghost Gum And Gorge, Central Australia, 1952
  watercolour on paper
  35.5 x 38.0 cm
  signed lower right: ALBERT NAMATJIRA
• Provenance:
  Painted for Father Tierney (Catholic Church), Alice Springs, 1952 Private collection, New South Wales, acquired from the above, 1983 Thence by descent Private collection, New South Wales
• Notes:
  ‘He was definitely the beginning of a recognition of Aboriginal people by white Australia’. 1 Often portrayed as a tragic figure caught between two cultures, Albert Namatjira was the first Aboriginal artist to achieve both local and international renown, having made a lasting contribution to Australian art through his depictions of desert locations in the Western MacDonnell Ranges. These dramatic landscapes were immortalised in the paintings that he created, and for Australians, who had rarely seen such country, the colour and the light in his desert paintings was a revelation that subsequently became synonymous with our vision of the Australian outback. These six paintings, acquired over a decade between 1979 and 1990, bring together Namatjira’s favourite mountains and places – Haasts Bluff, Mount Sonder, Glen Helen and the splendour of Palm Valley, in his mother’s country. Already an accomplished craftsman producing pokerwork decorated woomeras, boomerangs and wooden plaques, it was after viewing an exhibition of watercolour paintings by Victorian artists Rex Battarbee and John Gardner at the Hermannsburg Mission in 1934 that Albert Namatjira found his calling. Immediately interested in the medium, Namatjira pleaded to be allowed to learn watercolour techniques and his persistence paid off with Rex Battarbee agreeing to Namatjira accompanying him on two month-long expeditions in 1936. With Namatjira as guide, they visited some spectacular locations around the Western MacDonnell Ranges in the vicinity of his homelands. In return for Namatjira’s guiding expertise Battarbee taught him his method of landscape watercolour painting. His skill so impressed Battarbee that he noted after only a brief period, ‘I felt he had done so well that he had no more to learn from me about colour.’ 2 Success and recognition soon followed with his first solo shows selling out in Melbourne (1938) and Adelaide (1939) and the Art Gallery of South Australia acquiring Ilum-baura (Haasts Bluff ), 1939, for its collection. Namatjira’s success and fame grew, reinforced by regular exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne and growing media attention. With daily papers and popular magazines such as Australasian Post and The Women’s Weekly running feature articles on him, Namatjira was becoming something of a national figure. His fame peaked in 1954 when he was presented with a Coronation Medal by Queen Elizabeth II in Canberra during the Royal Tour. Through a combination of deep ancestral connection to Arrente country and his extraordinary compositional skills in representing country and the changing effects of the light, Albert Namatjira inspired a school of painting that had a major impact across Australia and created some of the first bridges between Aboriginal and western cultures, which were reinforced by later forms of desert art. 1. Perkins, C., quoted on the 7.30 Report: McLaughlin, M., ‘A Report on the Life of Albert Namatjira’, 7.30 Report, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), broadcast 3 July 2002 2. Morphy, H., Aboriginal Art, Phaidon Press, London, 1998, p. 268
• Estimate:
  A$30,000 - 40,000
• 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.