Albert Namatjira (; born Elea Namatjira; 28 July 1902 – 8 August 1959) was an Arrernte painter from the MacDonnell Ranges in Central Australia, widely considered one of the most notable Australian artists. As a pioneer of contemporary Indigenous Australian art, he was arguably one of the most famous Indigenous Australians of his generation. He was the first Aboriginal artist to receive popularity from a wide Australian audience.
A member of the Western Arrernte people, Namatjira was born and raised at the remote Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission, 126 km west-southwest from Alice Springs. He showed interest in art from an early age but it was not until 1934 (aged 32) and under the guidance of Rex Battarbee that he began to paint seriously. Namatjira's richly detailed, Western art-influenced watercolours of the outback departed significantly from the abstract designs and symbols of traditional Aboriginal art, and inspired the Hermannsburg School of painting. He became a household name in Australia and reproductions of his works hung in many homes throughout the nation.
In 1956, a portrait of Namatjira by William Dargie became the first of an Aboriginal person to win the Archibald Prize. Namatjira was awarded the Queen's Coronation Medal in 1953, and was honoured with an Australian postage stamp in 1968.
Namatjira was the first recorded Northern Territory Aboriginal person to be freed from restrictions that made Aboriginal people wards of the state when he was granted full rights of citizenship in 1957. This gave him the right to vote in national, state and territory elections, gave him freedom of movement and freed him from restrictions on buying alcohol; but, in the Northern Territory, he still had limited land rights. However, Namatjira remained poorly treated by the government; he was sentenced to prison after leaving a bottle of rum on the back seat of his car, which was likely taken and consumed by a man who had then drunkenly beaten and killed his own wife. Public and international outcry intervened in the liability ruling and Namatjira instead served less than two months in a native reserve in Papunya. He continued to live in Papunya with his wife, until he died of heart disease in an Alice Springs hospital in 1959.
Described as a "monumental figure" within Australian art, Namatjira is considered one of the most talented Arrernte artists to have lived. As one of the foremost painters of the Hermannsburg movement, he blended indigenous landscapes and Western-style painting techniques to "bring central Australia to life, for thousands who had never seen it for themselves." His legacy lives on through international critical acclaim, the naming of his homeland's electorate after him, and his artistically inclined descendants. They form the artistic and memorial collective the Namatjira project, which includes his Ramsay Prize and Archibald Prize-winning great-grandson Vincent Namatjira.
Early life He was born at Hermannsburg Mission, Ntaria, in Alice Springs in 1902, the son of Jonathan Namatjira. They were Western Arrernte people.
Namatjira was raised on the Hermannsburg Mission and baptised after his parents' adoption of Christianity. He was born as Elea, but once baptised, they changed his name to Albert. As a child, he sketched what he saw around him. After a western-style upbringing on the mission, including attending the school and living in a dormitory, separated from his parents, at the age of 13 Namatjira returned to the bush for initiation and was exposed to traditional culture and initiated as a member of the Arrernte community (in which he was to eventually become an elder).
When he was 18 years old, he left the mission and married his wife Ilkalita, a Kukatja woman, who was christened Rubina upon their return to Hermannsburg. They had five sons and three daughters.
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. In 1928 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. He also worked as a blacksmith, carpenter and stockman, at the mission and at the surrounding cattle stations.
He was a cousin of Aboriginal country music star Gus Williams, and is credited with bringing music into Williams' life.
Career
Namatjira was introduced to western-style painting through a charity art exhibition in 1933, which raised the money to bring fresh water to his hometown of Hermannsburg. The exhibition was run by Violet Teague, whom Namatjira admired enough to name his daughter after, and her sister Una.
In 1934, Namatjira met Rex Battarbee and John Gardner, who had an exhibition at his mission. Battarbee returned to the area in the winter of 1936 to paint the landscape, and Namatjira, expressing an interest in learning to paint, acted as his cameleer and guide to show him local scenic areas.
Namatjira started painting in a 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. 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 his early career, Namatjira's work included tjuringa (sacred object) designs, biblical themes and figurative subjects, and he also carved and painted various artefacts.
In 1937 Friedrich Albrecht, superintendent of Hermannsburg, took ten of Namatjira's watercolours with him to a Lutheran conference at Nuriootpa, South Australia, and Battarbee put three of his paintings in an exhibition with the Royal South Australian Society of Arts in Adelaide. In 1938, Namatjira held his first solo exhibition in Melbourne.
He became the first prominent Aboriginal artist to work in a contemporary western style, and thus regarded as an example of assimilation. In 1944 he was included in Who's Who in Australia.
Subsequent exhibitions in Sydney and Adelaide also sold out. His work garnered wide acclaim, both in Australia and in other countries. 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. He was elected an honorary member of the Royal Art Society of New South Wales in 1955.
Not only did his own art become widely recognised, but a painting of him by William Dargie won the Archibald Prize in 1956, the first painting of an Aboriginal person to win the prize.Namatjira profile, artistsfootsteps.com; accessed 26 July 2015.
Artworks, style and critical reception
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 Namatjira capturing the reflection in the water. 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 Namatjira 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 (–49).
His unique style of painting was denounced soon after his death by some critics as being a product of his assimilation into western culture, rather than his own connection to his subject matter or his natural style. This view has, however, been largely abandoned.
Although Namatjira's paintings appear similar to conventional European landscapes, his work was imbued with his feeling for country and sacred sites. He used repetition, intricate patterns and high horizons to blend the styles of the two worlds he lived in.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales website quotes George Alexander, coordinator of Contemporary Art Programmes:
In 2022, Namatjira's work enjoyed a surge in popularity that exceeded the general increased interest in Australian art at this time. Glen Helen Gorge sold for more than in Melbourne, and in July The Granseur – Mount Sonda fetched in Adelaide. The latter was a record price, achieving nearly more than had been expected.
Later life
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 singlehandedly providing for over 600 people with financial support. To ease the burden on his strained 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 Namatjira and his family took up residence in a squalid shanty at Morris Soak, a dry creek bed some distance from Alice Springs which is now the location of one of the town camps. Despite the fact that he was held as one of Australia's greatest artists, Namatjira was living in poverty. His plight became a media cause célèbre, resulting in a wave of public outrage.
In 1957 the government exempted Namatjira and his wife from the restrictive legislation that applied to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory.
Namatjira was encouraged to apply for full rights of citizenship at 55 years of age, allowing him to vote, own land, build a house and buy alcohol unlike other Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory. He was then exempt from classification as an 'Aboriginal' for the purposes of the Welfare Ordinance 1953. This did not mean that he was legally not an Aboriginal, as some sources mistakenly suggest. However, his adult children and other relatives remained as "wards" under the Welfare Ordinance 1953. Although Albert and Rubina were legally allowed to drink alcohol, his Aboriginal family and friends were not. This artificial social divide and the Arrernte culture that expected him to share everything he owned brought Namatjira into conflict with the law.