Albert Namatjira - Australian Artist (28 July 1902 - 8 August 1959)
Introduction:
Albert Namatjira was a
Western Arrernte man - from the Western MacDonnell Ranges.
He is one of Australia's best-known artists, whose landscape paintings are iconic images synonymous with the Australian outback.
Albert Namatjira outside Government House in Sydney during the 1950s.
You are free to use this image in any way and for any
purpose. Attribution: National Library of Australia, “Albert Namatjira”
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Namatjira_govt_house_sydney.jpg
June 2011 Available under a Public Domain licence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain
Education:
Albert attended the Hermannsburg mission school. At 13 he spent six months in the bush and underwent initiation.
Employment:
Albert Namatjira began painting in the mid-1930s.
He learnt the techniques of water colour painting from the artist Rex
Batterby after Batterby held a display at the Hermansburg in 1934.
He staged his first exhibition in 1938 and most of his works were bought by
private citizens.
Experiences:
"In his boyhood Albert sketched 'scenes and incidents around him . . . the cattle yard, the stockmen with their horses, and the hunters after game'. He later made artefacts such as boomerangs and woomeras. Encouraged by the mission authorities, he began to produce mulga-wood plaques with poker-worked designs. Meanwhile, he worked as a blacksmith, carpenter, stockman and cameleer—at the mission for rations and on neighbouring stations for wages. The spectacular scenery of Central Australia, then entering the national consciousness as a symbol of Australian identity, attracted artists to Hermannsburg, among them Rex Battarbee and John Gardner. During their second visit in 1934 they held an exhibition for an Aboriginal audience. The Arrernte were familiar with illustrations of biblical scenes, but none had seen landscapes depicting their own surroundings." (Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography: Albert Namatjira (1902 - 1959)
“Arreyonga Paddock, James Range” by
Albert Namatjira
Presented to the Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls Home in June 1957
by the Artist
(Source:
Aboriginal Health & Medical Research Council of NSW ).
Opportunities & Training:
"Motivated by a deep attachment to his country and the possibility of a vocation that offered financial return, Namatjira expressed an interest in learning to paint. In 1936 he accompanied Battarbee as a cameleer on two month-long excursions in and around the Macdonnell Ranges. Battarbee was impressed by his evident talent. In the following year Pastor Friedrich Albrecht, the superintendent of Hermannsburg, displayed ten of Namatjira's watercolours at a Lutheran conference held at Nuriootpa, South Australia. Battarbee included another three of his water-colours in an exhibition with the Royal South Australian Society of Arts, Adelaide. In 1938 the two men went on an expedition, during which Battarbee taught him photography. Later that year Namatjira held his first solo exhibition at the Fine Art Society Gallery, Melbourne. With Battarbee's assistance as teacher, dealer and mentor, a school of artists developed around Namatjira." (Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography: Albert Namatjira (1902 - 1959)
Links:
Australian
Dictionary of Biography: Albert Namatjira (1902 - 1959)
Wikipedia: Albert
Namatjira
Aboriginal Art News
National Art
Gallery of Australia: Seeing the Centre
Artists' Footsteps: Albert Namatjira
National
Museum of Australia
Aboriginal
Art Online
| Did You Know? Institutions and the art establishment tended to shun him. He was in his 50s when the Commonwealth Government proclaimed all but a few of the 16,000 or so Aborigines in the Northern Territory to be wards of the state. A massive public campaign saved Namatjira from being included. That meant he became a citizen, free of the regulations which put his countrymen under the guardianship of the director of welfare. What happened when Namatjira became a citizen was that he lost his right to be an Aboriginal person. Australia Post created a set of stamps to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Albert Namatjira in 2002  |
