by Jim Elmslie
Feature image caption: Image of Albert Namatjira work Finke Gorge Glen Helen. Courtesy Theodore Bruce Auctions, Sydney.
Water colour paintings of the Hermannsburg School are instantly recognizable by their subject matter, form and the delicate hues employed. These landscape paintings of the ranges of central Australia, many near the eponymous Hermannsburg Mission, are distinctively unique. Public appreciation for these works has waxed and waned over the decades since the 1930s when this genre emerged beneath the gentle brush of its founder: Western-Arrernte speaking Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira. Feted in the 1950s with major exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne and an audience with Queen Elizabeth during her 1954 trip to Australia, Albert Namatjira become one of Australia’s most famous and successful artists. Multitudes of prints adorned the walls of suburbia, giving pleasure as something distinctly ‘Australian’ and somehow reinforcing the widespread perception of Aboriginal assimilation.
Later, in the 1970s and 1980s, Hermannsburg works lost some of their appeal; they came to be seen as ‘inauthentic’ works of Aboriginal art, as paintings devoid of cultural significance, as caricatures of mission-based attempts to extinguish traditional beliefs and convert Aboriginal people not just to Christianity but into contemporary Australian society as station workers, labourers and domestic staff. The dynamism of the Western Desert art movement from the late 1970s on seemed to reinforce this chasm between what was seen as authentic Aboriginal art steeped in ancient beliefs, and tourist art, produced solely for the tastes of white Europeans.
More recently this pendulum has swung again and these works, particularly those by Albert Namatjira, have again found favour and are now highly sought after, achieving prices at auction that only a handful of artists can match. I would suggest that the genesis of this revival lies in the enormous amount of research and study that have been undertaken in the field of Aboriginal art (and Aboriginality in general) since the 1980s, coinciding with gradual recognition of the critical place Aboriginal people occupy within the Australian project. In the 1930s it was widely assumed (including by many Aboriginal people) that the ‘natives’ of this country would simply die out or be completely subsumed by the dominant white culture. This view was based on the massive population declines that had occurred across the nation from the onslaught of European settlement and colonization. Clearly that view was wrong: Aboriginal numbers have increased strongly since the 1960s; Australia has become a multi-cultural society, and Aboriginal culture has become an integral part of contemporary life.
This has led to a reappraisal of the Hermannsburg School. Much has been written and major exhibitions held. The works have been reassessed by such renowned scholars as Philip Jones, of the South Australian Museum, in his award winning book, Ochre and Rust. Jones points out that Namatjira occupied a fraught existence between two radically different cultures and was presented “as an authentic ‘savage’ with a remarkable talent for European art.” While producing such works was at least partly motivated by economic considerations they were also a celebration of the landscape itself, which for Aboriginals, who had lived in these landscapes for eons, was inseparable from their own culture, history and traditions. Namatjira managed to navigate, at least somewhat, the chasm between the ancient world of pre-contact times and the rapidly engulfing world of white settlement, Christianity and colonial domination which was bent, consciously and also unconsciously, on destroying Aboriginal culture as pagan, backward and primitive.
One could go much further than space permits into this fascinating realm – a microcosm of the creation of today’s Australia: the periods of conflict and ‘dispersal’; co-option, paternalism and assimilation, through to cultural revival and celebration. Jones comments, for instance, that few of Albert Namatjira’s paintings, and those of this sons and nephews, Keith, Gabrieal, Vincent, Ewald and Maurice, and other members of the school such as Walter Ebataringa, Otto Pareroultja and Wenton Rubuntja, feature anything other than the landscape. “Led by Namatjira, Arrernte artists developed a painting style in which even human and animal figures, let alone events, ceremonies or sacred objects, became superfluous”. The focus was purely on the landscape, which was itself sacred.
Albert Namatjira began his artist career at Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission when the director, Pastor F W Albrech, started a commercial initiative to produce artefacts – boomerangs, shields and woomeras etc. for the tourist market around 1930. Albert excelled at this and evolved his craft to the production of oval plaques made from mulga wood (curiously churinga shaped, as Jones notes) which had Biblical quotes burnt onto them using the hot wire technique. When the Australian artist, Rex Battarbee, journeyed to Hermannsburg in 1934, seeking warmer climes for his chronic ill health, he engaged Albert as his guide on painting expeditions initially undertaken with camels and much later motorized trucks. Namatjira became a protogee of Battarbee, and learnt the art of producing high quality watercolour paintings from him. Battarbee and Namatjira formed a close association and it was through Battarbee’s promotion of Albert’s paintings that the artist achieved rapid and great fame.
At that time all Aborigines of the Northern Territory were officially wards of the state, with severely restricted rights. In 1957 Albert Namatjira was the first Aboriginal to be granted limited Australian citizenship, which gave him the right to vote, travel without permission, and to buy alcohol. Painting provided funds for a self-sufficient life, but with onerous kinship obligations this was always a struggle and a source of tension both between family groups and with government authorities. Albert Namatjira died in 1959 aged 57 years leaving behind a massive legacy, including an entirely new artistic school, which was carried on by his sons, nephews and clan members. Even today the Hermannsburg School continues and the sale of watercolour paintings has provided a source of income for several generations of Aboriginal artists.
A decade after Albert Namatjira’s death American traveler, Lucile Fredrickson saw firsthand the still-vibrant Hermannsburg school when she worked in the Alice Springs Hotel for six months in 1967 and got to know many of the extended Namatjira clan and other artists of the school. They had maintained the tradition created by Albert and were producing high quality works to a ready market. Lucile put together a collection of paintings which were only recently sold at auction in Sydney for prices that reflected the importance of provenance. The ability to connect a painting not only with its creator but also the time and pace of creation adds to the appeal – and value – of art works in all categories.
One aspect of the Fredrickson Collection that further enhanced their value was the fine condition of the works. Watercolour paintings tend to fade if left for years on a wall in strong sunlight, particularly the harsh glare typical of an Australian summer. These paintings had spent the last fifty years in storage and so retained much of their original intensity and colour.
Another excellent example of provenance is the fine work, Finke Gorge Glen Helen, by Albert Namatjira shown here. This work was purchased by a couple on their honeymoon in Alice Springs in 1954. With the work was the original receipt signed by Rex Battarbee (for 26 pounds) as well as a letter sent by Battarbee to the new owners thanking them for payment. To situate the work in time and space: June 24, 1954, Alice Springs, and for the sale to be executed by one of the key people in the school’s development: Rex Battarbee, gives this work an added degree of authenticity and makes it a truly historical artefact in its own right.
The Hermannsburg School and its founders, Albert Namatjira and Rex Battarbee, is a uniquely Australian story. It is not only a story of artistic evolution but also contains the social and political history of the European colonization of Central Australia and the Aboriginal people who live there – people who had previously been undisturbed for many thousands of years.
Jones, Philip, Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2007.