Albert Namatjira

Albert Namatjira (28 July 1902 – 8 August 1959), born Elea Namatjira, was one of Australia's most acclaimed visual artists. He was a Western Arrernte man, an Indigenous Australian of the Western MacDonnell Ranges area. Albert Namatjira is one of Australia's great artists, and perhaps the best known Aboriginal painter.

He is best known for his watercolour Australian outback desert landscapes, a style which inspired the Hermannsburg School of Aboriginal art. While his work is obviously the product of his life and experiences, his paintings are not in the highly symbolic style of traditional Aboriginal art; they are richly detailed depictions.He is also notable for being the first Northern Territory Aborigine to be granted Australian citizenship in the sense of being freed from the restrictions of discriminatory legislation that made Aborigines wards of the State.

In his childhood

Born at Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission, near Alice Springs in 1902, he was raised on the Hermannsburg Mission and baptised after his parents' adoption of Christianity. After a western style upbringing on the mission, at the age of 16, Namatjira returned to the bush for initiation and was exposed to traditional culture as a member of the Arrernte community (which he was to eventually become an elder within). He obtained the love and respect of his land that is seen in his works. After he returned, he married his wife Rubina at the age of 18. His wife, like his father's wife, was from the wrong "skin" group and he violated the law of his people by marrying outside the classificatory kinship system. He was ostracised for several years in which he worked as a camel driver and saw much of Central Australia, which he was later to depict in his paintings.

Although doing a small amount of rough but non-traditional artwork in his youth, he was introduced to western style painting through an exhibition by two painters from Melbourne at his mission in 1934. One of these painters, Rex Battarbee, returned to the area in the winter of 1936 to paint the landscape and Albert acted as a guide to show him local scenic areas. In return Albert was shown how to paint with watercolours, a skill that he quickly excelled at.

The height of success

Albert Namatjira started painting in a distinctly unique style. His landscapes normally highlighted both the rugged geological features of the land in the background, and the distinctive Australian flora in the foreground with very old stately and majestic white gum trees surrounded by twisted scrub. His work had a high quality of illumination showing the gashes of the land and the twists in the trees in a breathtaking manner. His colours were similar to the ochres that his ancestors had used to depict the same landscape, but his style was appreciated by Europeans because it met the aesthetics of western art.

In 1938 his first exhibition was held in Melbourne and sold out. Subsequent exhibitions in Sydney and Adelaide also sold out. For ten years Namatjira continued to paint, his works continuing to sell quickly and his popularity continuing to rise. Queen Elizabeth II became one of his more notable fans and he was awarded the Queen's Coronation medal in 1953 and met her in Canberra in 1954. Not only did his own art become widely recognized, but even a painting of him by William Dargie won the Archibald Prize in 1956. He became popular, critically acclaimed and wealthy. He, however, was always glad to return to the outback.

Artworks

Namatjira's artworks were colourful and varied depictions of the Australian landscape. 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 Albert capturing the reflection in the water beautifully well. 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" he 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). His skills at colouring trees can be seen clearly in this portrait and Namatjira was fully aware of his own talent, as when describing another landscape painter Namatjira said 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."

His skills kept increasing with experience as is shown in the highly photographic quality of "Mt Hermannsburg" (1957), painted only two years before he died.

Citizenship and demise

Due to his wealth, Namatjira soon found himself the subject of "humbugging", a ritualised form of begging. Arrernte are expected to share everything they own, and as Namatjira's income grew, so did his extended family. At one time he was single-handedly providing for over six hundred people. To ease the burden on his straining resources, Namatjira sought to lease a cattle station to benefit his extended family. Originally granted, the lease was subsequently rejected because the land was part of a returned servicemen's ballot, and also because he had no ancestral claim on the property. He then tried to build a house in Alice Springs, but was cheated in his land dealings. The land he was sold was on a flood plain and was unsuitable for building. The Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck, offered him free land in a reserve on the outskirts of Alice Springs, but this was rejected, and Albert and his family took up residence in a squalid shanty at Morris Soak -- a dry creek bed some distance from Alice Springs. Despite the fact that he was held as one of Australia's greatest artists he was living in abject poverty. His plight became a media cause celebre, resulting in a wave of public outrage.

The government granted Albert and his wife Australian citizenship in 1957, in the sense of exempting them from the restrictive legislation that applied only to Aborigines. This entitled them to vote, own land, build a house and buy alcohol. Although Albert and Rubina were legally allowed to drink alcohol, his Aboriginal family and friends were still Wards of the State, and were not. The nomadic Arrernte culture expected him to share everything he owned, even after they ceased being nomads. It was this contradiction that was to bring Namatjira into conflict with the white man's law.

When an Aboriginal woman Fay Iowa was killed at Morris Soak, Namatjira was held responsible by Jim Lemaire the Stipendiary Magistrate for bringing alcohol into the camp. He was reprimanded at the coronial inquest. It was against the law for an Australian citizen to supply alcohol to a native. Albert was charged with leaving a bottle of rum in a place i.e. on a car seat where a native, a clan brother and fellow Hermannsburg artist Henoch Raberaba, could get access to it. He was sentenced to six months in prison for supplying an Aboriginal with liquor. After a public uproar the Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck intervened and the sentence was served at Papunya Native Reserve. He was released after only serving two months due to medical and humanitarian reasons.

Despondent after his incarceration, he continued to live with Rubina in a cottage at Papunya, where he suffered a heart attack. There is evidence that Albert believed that he had the bone pointed at him by a member of Fay Iowa's family. That Albert was being "sung" to death was also held by Frank Clune, a popular travel writer, aboriginal activist, and organiser of Albert's whirlwind 1956 trip.

After being transferred to Alice Springs hospital, Namatjira astonished his mentor Rex Battarbee by presenting him with three of the best landscapes he ever painted, with a promise of more to come; a promise unrealised. He died soon after of heart disease complicated by pneumonia on September 8, 1959 in Alice Springs, only two years after he was granted citizenship.

ince the death of Albert Namatjira

At the time of his death Namatjira had painted a total of around two thousand paintings and had two short biographical films made about him. His unique style of painting however was denounced soon after his death by many indigenous art puritans as being a product of his assimilation into western culture, rather than his own connection to his subject matter or his natural style. Fact|date=March 2007 This view, although still present in some critics thoughts, Fact|date=March 2007 has been largely abandoned and Albert Namatjira is hailed as one of the greatest Australian artists of all time and a pioneer for Aboriginal rights.

Namatjira's work is on public display in some of Australia's major art galleries, with some noteworthy exceptions. The Art Gallery of NSW rejected Namatjira's work. In the words of Hal Missingham, the then Director of the gallery: "We'll consider his work when it comes up to scratch".

Albert Namatjira is the subject of a song of the same name by the Australian band Not Drowning, Waving, included on their 1993 album, Circus. He is also referenced in Midnight Oil's song, Truganani, We Are Australian and in Archie Roach's song, Native Born.

References

*cite web
crap stuff.com
last= Kleinert
title =Namatjira, Albert {Elea) (1902 - 1959)
publisher =Australian National University
work=Australian Dictionary of Biography
url =http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A150530b.htm?hilite=Albert%3BNamatjira
accessdate = 2007-11-16
* [http://www.anbg.gov.au/biography/namatjira-albert.html Biography - Australian National Botanic Gardens]

External links

* [http://www.nga.gov.au/namatjira/ Seeing the Centre: The art of Albert Namatjira 1902-1959] , a National Gallery of Australia travelling and online exhibition
* [http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/cdview?pi=nla.pic-an23751666 Albert Namatjira photograph collection] , National Library of Australia
* [http://www.nga.gov.au/Namatjira/Gallery.htm Namatjira's works] in the National Gallery of Australia

Persondata
NAME=Namatjira, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Namatjira, Elea
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Australian painter
DATE OF BIRTH= 28 July 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH= Hermannsburg, Northern Territory
DATE OF DEATH= 8 August 1959
PLACE OF DEATH= Alice Springs, Northern Territory