Albert Namatjira (1902-59), painter, became interested in painting at the Hermannsburg Mission in the 1930s. After learning watercolour technique, he was persuaded to exhibit his work in Melbourne in 1938. The exhibition sold out in two days. During the 1940s his work became fashionable throughout Australia and he was the subject of a biography and a film. In 1954 he met the Queen in Canberra, and he was awarded citizenship status in 1957. One of the consequences of citizenship was that Namatjira was legally entitled to buy alcohol, but when he shared it with his fellow Arrernte, as custom required, he was sentenced to imprisonment. Although the sentence was commuted, he never recovered, and died the following year. Nearly 50 years after his death, Namatjira remains the best-known of Australian Aboriginal painters.
The prolific portraitist Sir William Dargie CBE (1912–2003) knew, and had painted with, Albert Namatjira. In 1956 Dargie won one of his eight Archibald Prizes with a portrait of Namatjira, whose ‘tremendous inner dignity,’ he said, contributed to ‘the most wonderful face for a portrait I’ve ever seen’.
Purchased with funds provided by Marilyn Darling AC and with the assistance of Philip Bacon Galleries 2000
© Roger Dargie and Faye Dargie
The portrait is of Albert Namatjira by William Dargie, made in 1958 using oil paint on canvas laid on composition board and measuring 76 cm high by 61cm wide.
The Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira is depicted in a desert landscape, sitting calmly on a rock holding one of his own paintings. His figure takes up most of the composition against a distant desert background.
The bright blue desert sky fills the top two thirds of the background around and above Namatjira. In lively and breezy, mostly vertical, strokes, the painted sky starts in bold cerulean at the top of the painting and fades to sapphire and powder blue where it meets the distant purple mountains. Some horizontal paint strokes hint at faint clouds.
Land occupies the lower third of the background. In the far distance a blurred mountain range of purples and dark blue runs along the horizon. The flat dirt is rendered in pale peachy oranges. Small blue green dashes and dots of paint suggest sparse and distant vegetation.
Namatjira's seated figure, cropped at the shins, fills the foreground. His head is positioned in profile facing the left. His skin is warm shades of dark brown and umber. He has short black hair, thick and wavy, flecked with grey, which neatly follows the shape of his large ear. His forehead angles diagonally toward his prominent brow, creased gently with wrinkles. He has a bushy raised eyebrow, and deeply set brown eye gazing into the distance. His nose is straight and upturned, his mouth slightly open. He has strong cheekbones leading to plump jowls and a thick neck, around which sits a thin red bandana tucked into his white button-up shirt.
Namatjira's body is turned slightly towards the left, following his gaze. His left arm is bent at the elbow, the forearm leaning casually on his left thigh, his hand and fingers gently hanging down. Between this hand and his raised right hand, he gently holds a sketch of a landscape, resting on his lap, and angled away from his body. The paper faces towards us directly, showing a watery sketch of a landscape scene. A large tree on the right with grey green foliage, bright blue mountains in the background and pale peachy orange dirt in the foreground.
Namatjira has dark taupe pants, his knees are parted, and he sits on a low reddish-brown rock.
Audio description written by Marina Neilson and voiced by Lucie Shawcross, 2021
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
The art and landscape of Albert Namatjira.
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