Lowitja O'Donoghue

Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue AC CBE DSG (1932–2024), a Yankunytjatjara woman, dedicated her life’s work to advancing the rights and wellbeing of Australia’s First Peoples. Born at Indulkana in the APY Lands in South Australia, she was removed from her mother at the age of two and raised in a children’s home run by missionaries at Quorn in the Flinders Ranges. She recollects that she became rebellious at a young age after hearing her culture being denigrated. ‘I was always asking the question about who am I, where did I come from, who’s my mother and who’s my father, and where are they? Never got any answers to any of that at all,’ she says. At 16 she got a job as a nanny. Encouraged to become a nurse, she applied for a traineeship and was – eventually – accepted, becoming the first Aboriginal woman to complete her nursing training at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. She worked there until the early 1960s, and also travelled to remote communities, learning about her heritage through ‘just doing what I could to heal people’. She joined the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in 1967 and by 1975 she had become its regional director in South Australia. In 1977 she was elected Foundation Chair of the National Aboriginal Conference, formed under prime minister Malcolm Fraser as a peak body to advise the Federal government on Indigenous affairs, and she chaired the Aboriginal Development Commission from 1989 to 1990. Named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1983, she was Australian of the Year in 1984, and in 1999 she was named a Companion of the Order of Australia. In 2005 she was invested by Pope John Paul II as a Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great. While Chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission between 1990 and 1996, she helped to draft the Mabo legislation. The holder of six honorary doctorates, she was the patron of the Lowitja Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research. In 2022, on her 90th birthday, the Lowitja Institute formed the Lowitja O’Donoghue Foundation to continue and preserve her legacy.

Robert Hannaford said of O'Donoghue that he observed a 'vast understanding and sympathy in her face, a sadness', but also thought she looked 'fantastic in that light I've got in that studio'. The pair became friends during the many hours of sittings involved in creating the work.

Commissioned with funds donated by BHP Billiton Limited, Rio Tinto Aboriginal Fund, Newmont Australia Limited, Reconciliation Australia, Hon Paul Keating and Hon Fred Chaney 2006
© Commonwealth of Australia

Audio description

Show transcript

This portrait is of Lowitja O'Donoghue, Yankunjatjara woman and Indigenous rights campaigner. It was painted by Robert Hannaford in 2006 in oil on canvas. The work measures about 1.4 m tall by 1.4 m wide, set in its wide frame of dark wood. The portrait is painted realistically with loosely applied brushstrokes. Lowitja wears a bright red skirt-suit and is seated in front of a dark background.

The scene is lit from the top left. Lowitja is illuminated in a soft pool of light filling the top right and centre of the painting. Pale green-grey and blue-grey brush strokes at the top right curve around and down towards the bottom left, their direction changing, sweeping around and getting darker towards the lower edge of the canvas.

Lowitja sits on a dark wood chair in the centre of the image. The rounded corners of its back rise above each of her shoulders. Her head is tilted slightly down to her left with her chin angled up. Lowitja’s silvery hair is short, parted on the side, and styled in a wave over her forehead. Her skin is in warm honey tones and her cheeks are tinged pink. Lowitja has fine steeply-arched eyebrows above her dark eyes that gaze directly at us. Her nose is broad and deep grooves flow from it to the outer edges of her thin rosy lips. Her lips are closed and slightly downturned, creating soft jowels which frame her broad chin.

In the portrait Lowitja wears a loosley-fitted long jacket that runs down her lap to her knees. It has an Aboriginal Flag pin on the left lapel and is open, with three large round gold buttons gleaming brightly down its left side. A strand of black red and yellow beads and an oval shaped Aboriginal Flag pendant on a fine chain stand out against her black round-necked top.

Lowitja’s elbows rest lightly on the carved wooden arms of the chair and her hands lie with fingers extended in her lap. On the ring finger of her left hand she wears a wide yellow-gold band, while on her right a ring is set with a large black rectangular stone.

Lowitja’s red skirt extends over her knees and out of frame. The same red has been used by the artist to sign ‘Hannaford 06’ on the bottom right of the canvas.

Audio description written by Lucinda Shawcross and voiced by Amy Middleby