Aboriginal Painter — Albert Namatjiras Life
Albert Namatjira was the first of the Australian aboriginals to show talent as a watercolourist in a European yet distinctive style. His financial success inspired other of his tribesmen to emulate his efforts and so was founded the Hermannsburg school of native painting. Namatjira was a full-blood of the Aranda tribe. His parents were primitive, unlettered nomads, but Albert, born on July 28, 1902, at the Hermannsburg (Lutheran) Mission, Northern Territory, was given the elements of an education at the mission school. His knowledge of the world, until well into middleage, was confined to the harsh but vivid landscapes of the interior, and his knowledge of art, until 1934, to the biblical painting he had seen in mission books.
At 32 he married, and raising a big family, he had worked as stockman, camel driver and station hand, and seemed destined to remain in isolated anonymity for the rest of his life as one of the big population of de-tribal-ised. mission-educated aboriginals living in the inland as pastoral workers. The event that was tc change his life was the visit to the interior in 1934 of two Victorian artists, Rex Battarbee and John Gardner. They gave an exhition of their water colours at Hermannsburg and so impressed Namatjira that, with the help of the mission head. Pastor Allbrecht, he obtained paints and brushes and made his first clumsy efforts to put his tribal homeland. on paper. Two years later, Battarbee returned to find Namatjira waiting to offer his services as camelman. cook and guide, and timidly hoping that in return, Battarbee would show him how to use paints. Battarbee did so and was astounded by Namatjira's immediate grasp of the technique of watercolour painting. Two years later, Namatjira gave his first exhibition and sold 41 water colours in a few days at prices ranging from £1 to £B, but by 1944 some of his pictures brought £4O, and in 1945 and 1946 three exhibitions produced an average price of £5O a painting with the entire output sold in a matter of minutes.
It was not long before other Aranda tribesmen, fired by Namatjira's example, began trying their hands at water colours. Among
them was Edwin Pareroultja. whose work, • some consider, is more significant than Namatjira's. Neither Namatjira nor anyone of the others painted anything but the riotously coloured country they knew so well. Their pictures are of the picturesque tribal land of the Macdonnell Ranges, where mountains rise sharply from spinifex covered plains, steep sided gorges gash hills like saw cuts and pleasant springs hide in unexpected places. Rugged and gnarled, the land is beautiful to a remarkable degree with its flora of ghost gums. flamingo-red ranges, cloud-streaked skies and glowing sunsets. While the overnight success of Namatjira and his school caught popular imagination, it began a sometimes bitter controversy as to the intrinsic merit of the work.
One of the most outspoken critics, Alan McCulloch, of Melbourne, wrote: “In relation to the European art to which they aspire, they (the Hermannsburg water colours) have no value at all. Popular opinion, a meaningless criterion when applied to any specialised activity, accords them a high place of honour in the field of art, whereas, in my belief, they are neither better nor worse than the works produced byhundreds of inconsequential water colourists who practise their craft in every city in Australia. The public might be astonished, but it is no surprise at all to artists, that virtually any member of the Aranda tribe can learn to make one of these water colours in a few months.”
Namatjira’s financial success enabled him to better his standard of living, to buy a motor truck to take him where once he padded on foot, but he continued to live in the simple style that he had known in his pre-prosperity days. A heavily-built man (18 stone), he was quietly spoken and behaved, showing neither condescension nor deference to others. He had made only a veryfew short visits to cities and lived mainly on the outskirts of Alice Springs, where his gentility and quiet demeanour made him a popular figure as he travelled the dusty tracks of the outback with his eight children, either by truck, on camel or foot, with a box of water colours, a bundle of brushes tied with string and a parcel of drawing paper wrapped in clean linen. He had no studio, but lived under the stars as his ancestors had done.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28976, 18 August 1959, Page 3
Word Count
747Aboriginal Painter— Albert Namatjiras Life Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28976, 18 August 1959, Page 3
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