ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902-1959)
Mount Giles (1, 389 m - 4, 557 ft)
Australia (Northern territory)
In Yuendumu, watercolor, 1948
The mountain
Mount Giles (1, 389 m - 4, 557 ft) is one of the highest mountains in
the Northern Territory, Australia. It lies along the MacDonnell Ranges,
dominating Ormiston Pound, in the West MacDonnell National Park,
approximately 80 kilometres (50 mi) west of Alice Springs. It can be
visited via the celebrated Larapinta Trail and has views of Mount
Sonder, Ormiston Gorge and Pound, and the surrounding range. Climbing
the mountain requires a hard two- or three-day hike. The MacDonnell
Ranges is located in the Northern Territory, comprising 3,929,444
hectares (9,709,870 acres). The range is a 644 km (400 mi) long series
of mountains located in the centre of Australia, and consist of parallel
ridges running to the east and west of Alice Springs. The mountain
range contains many spectacular gaps and gorges as well as areas of
Aboriginal significance.
The ranges were named after Sir Richard
MacDonnell (the Governor of South Australia at the time) by John
McDouall Stuart, whose 1860 expedition reached them in April of that
year. The Horn Expedition investigated the ranges as part of the
scientific expedition into central Australia. Other explorers of the
range included David Lindsay and John Ross.
The MacDonnell Ranges are famous to have been often depicted in the paintings by Albert Namatjira.
The painter
Albert Namatjira born Elea Namatjira, was a Western
Arrernte-speaking Aboriginal artist from the MacDonnell Ranges in
Central Australia. As a pioneer of contemporary Indigenous Australian
art, he was the most famous Indigenous Australian of his generation.
Born and raised at the Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission outside Alice
Springs, Namatjira showed interest in art from an early age, but it was
not until 1934 (aged 32), under the tutelage of Rex Battarbee, that he
began to paint seriously. Namatjira's richly detailed, Western
art-influenced watercolours of the outback departed significantly from
the abstract designs and symbols of traditional Aboriginal art, and
inspired the Hermannsburg School of painting. He became a household name
in Australia—indeed, reproductions of his works hung in many homes
throughout the nation—and he was publicly regarded as a model Aborigine
who had succeeded in mainstream society.
Although not the first
Aboriginal artist to work in a European style, Albert Namatjira is
certainly the most famous. Ghost gums with luminous white trunks,
palm-filled gorges and red mountain ranges turning purple at dusk are
the hallmarks of the Hermannsburg school. Hermannsburg Mission was
established by Lutheran missionaries in 1877 on the banks of the Finke
River, west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Namatjira learnt watercolour
technique from the artist, Rex Battarbee.
Initially thought of as
having succumbed to European pictorial idioms – and for that reason, to
ideas of European privilege over the land – Namatjira’s landscapes have
since been re-evaluated as coded expressions on traditional sites and
sacred knowledge. Ownership of country is hereditary, but detailed
knowledge of what it ‘contains’ is learnt in successive stages through
ceremony, song, anecdote and contact. Namatjira’s father’s country lay
towards Mount Sonder and Glen Helen Gorge, in the MacDonnell Ranges, and
his mother’s country was in the region of Palm Valley in Central
Australia. In Namatjira’s paintings, the totemic connections to his
country are so indelible that, for example, Palm Valley the place and
Palm Valley, c.1940s, the painting seem to intersect, detailing
Namatjira’s artistic, cultural and proprietorial claim on the land.
One of his first landscapes from 1936, Central Australian Landscape,
shows a land of rolling green hills. Another early work, Ajantzi
Waterhole (1937), shows a close up view of a small waterhole, with
Namatjira capturing the reflection in the water. The landscape becomes
one of contrasting colours, a device that is often used by Western
painters, with red hills and green trees in Red Bluff (1938). Central
Australian Gorge (1940) shows detailed rendering of rocks and
reflections in the water. In Flowering Shrubs Namatjira contrasts the
blossoming flowers in the foreground with the more barren desert and
cliffs in the background. Namatjira's love of trees was often described
so that his paintings of trees were more portraits than landscapes,
which is shown in the portrait of the often depicted ghost gum in Ghost
Gum Glen Helen (c.1945-49). Namatjira's skills at colouring trees can be
clearly seen in this portrait. Namatjira was fully aware of his own
talent, as was shown when he was describing another landscape painter to
William Dargie: "He does not know how to make the side of a tree which
is in the light look the same colour as the side of the tree in
shadow...I know how to do better."
Namatjira's skills kept
increasing with experience as is shown in the highly photographic
quality of Mt Hermannsburg (1957), painted only two years before he
died.
In 1957, Namatjira became the first Aboriginal person to be
granted conditional Australian citizenship. This entitled him to limited
social freedoms and to live in Mparntwe, although he was prohibited
from purchasing land. His relations, including his children, were not
permitted the same privileges.
After an incident in 1958 that didn’t
directly involve the artist, Namatjira was charged with supplying
alcohol to members of the Aboriginal community – at the time, it was
illegal for all Aboriginal people, except Namatjira, to possess and
consume alcohol. Namatjira was sentenced to six months labour at Papunya
and this, exacerbated by the authorities’ refusal to allow him to
purchase the land of his ancestors, caused him profound despair. He
served only two months, and died shortly after.
The more recent,
dramatic success of the nearby Papunya Tula movement must be read
against the history of its predecessor, the Hermannsburg school, which
has endured for over half a century. In 2002, the centenary of
Namatjira’s birth was celebrated with a major retrospective at the
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
