Artist's Biography
The story of Albert Namatjira is one of both triumph and tragedy. Albert has often been referred to as “a wanderer between two worlds”. The unique situation he found himself in, with his artistic talent providing the bridge to cross from his ancestral Aboriginal culture and into the white man’s domain, was the crux of both his success and his troubles.
Namatjira received many white privileges – he was the first Aboriginal to be granted Australian citizenship, he was presented to Queen Elizabeth II in 1954, he has a place in the 1944 edition of “Who’s Who” and his Archibald prize-winning portrait was painted by the respected artist, William Dargie in 1956. Despite all this, it bears thinking about that as an Aboriginal, Albert found himself in an era of great uncertainty. Sadly, some of the time he may have been valued more for his curiosity value because of his success, rather than as an ambitious man in his own right who was limited by the restrictive policies of the time and the ambiguity of his unique situation.
Albert, originally called Elea, was born on 28 July 1902, into the Western Aranda tribal group, as eldest son to his father Namatjira and his mother Ljukuta. The Aranda were regarded as a strong and vital people and were amongst the first Aboriginal people to make contact with white Lutheran missionaries on the Finke River in the Northern Territory in 1877.
In 1905 when Elea was three years old, he and his mother and father were baptised at the Hermannsburg Mission and took new names, Albert, Emilia and Jonathon, respectively. The Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission was located about 160 kilometres south west of Alice Springs. Albert, a man of quiet dignity with a large, powerful physique, grew up at the Hermannsburg Mission receiving an education and religious instruction. He became a skilled craftsman who was regarded as a good helper at the mission.
When Albert was 18 he became attracted to Ilkalita, later baptised Rubina, a member of the Luritja tribe and the daughter of a Ceremonial Chief. Being of a different tribal group, Rubina was denied to Albert, but he eloped with her and did not return to the mission until 1923, by which stage they had three children – Enos, Oscar and Maisie. In their lifetimes, Albert and Rubina had ten children – five sons and five daughters (Enos, Oscar, Ewald, Keith, Maurice, Maisie, Martha, Hazel, Nelda and Violet), however, not all of them survived – Nelda and Violet had died by 1945, then Hazel and Martha in 1949 and 1950. (All of Albert’s children are now deceased.)
1932 was a significant year for the Hermannsburg Mission and for Albert, as this was the first time that Victorian artists Rex Battarbee and John Gardner visited Hermannsburg on a painting expedition of Central Australia. The artists handed out pencils and sketching paper to the children and initiated a long association with the mission. Albert missed this first visit as he was away at Henbury Station building a stockyard.
In 1934, Battarbee and Gardener returned and exhibited their work at the mission. The showing had a big impact on the 300 odd people who came to see the work, particularly Albert. Later, he said the work made him realise the beauty of his own country for the first time and he decided he wanted to learn to paint. His destiny did not evolve until he was 34, when in 1936 he accompanied Battarbee on a two-month camel trek and painting expedition. Transportation in the area was primitive with no main roads and camels were used to explore the surrounding terrain. In exchange for Albert’s skill as a “camel boy” and guide to the beautiful places around Hermannsburg, Rex Battarbee (1893-1973) showed Albert watercolour techniques. Battarbee was to return to Hermannsburg at two-year intervals and continued to tutor Albert whenever possible.
Battarbee had turned to watercolour painting after a serious wound in W.W.I left him recovering for four years and unable to return to life on the land. His individual style, the result of dissatisfaction with traditional watercolour methods, suited the vibrant colours of the Central Australian landscape.
Albert learnt very quickly, and Rex was convinced he would find fame, saying that Albert had “keen perception, good judgment and quick powers of deduction”. Rex praised Albert’s powers of concentration saying: “In teaching Albert one never had to repeat oneself. He never made the same mistake twice.”
The two-month trip in 1934 was the beginning of a career, which saw “Albert the Camel Boy” become Albert Namatjira the painter, a career that was to span 23 years. It is estimated that in his life, Albert may have painted over 2,000 pictures, many of them representing the landforms of the Aranda such as the MacDonnell Ranges, including Helen Valley west of Alice Springs, Mount Sonder and the Ormiston Gorge. Albert’s watercolours were also characteristic in their regular inclusion in the foreground of magnificent gum trees.
Albert’s first solo exhibition was arranged by Battarbee in 1938 in Melbourne and was an immediate success, followed by another equally successful show in Adelaide the following year. The Adelaide show was significant in that the National Art Gallery of South Australia bought “Haast’s Bluff” – the first institutional purchase of Albert’s work. By this time Albert was signing his work “Albert Namatjira”, taking his father’s original tribal name, Namatjira, meaning “Flying White Ant”, so that he had a second name to sign paintings. Before that for a short time he had signed “Namatjira Albert” and previously, in his first attempts “Albert”.
These first successful exhibitions led to regular annual exhibitions in every capital city in Australia, although none were held from 1940 to 1944 with most of Albert’s works at this time being sold privately to the military staff stationed at Alice
Springs. Over the following years Albert’s fame spread and many of his works were bought by overseas collectors.
At first Albert’s work was marketed by the Hermannsburg Mission, but later an Advisory Council was formed to supervise the sale and standard of Namatjira’s work. In 1951, when Albert left Hermannsburg to live in Alice Springs, the “Aranda Arts Council” was formed, headed by Rex Battarbee with proceeds being held for Albert, rather than by him personally. The Council was also formed to combat and control the falsely signed imitations of Albert’s work that had started to appear.
Albert continued to have many exhibitions in most Australian capitals and overseas. His success was to prove inspiring and attractive, resulting in a school of Aboriginal water-colourists springing up in the early 1940’s as other Hermannsburg residents took up painting, many receiving tuition from Albert. At first, they were mostly close male relatives to Namatjira – Albert’s older sons Enos, Oscar and Ewald; as well as the Pareroultja brothers Reuben, Otto and Edwin who had the same grandfather as Albert. Walter Ebatarinja was also taught by Albert. Among other artists with family ties to Albert Namatjira are Henoch and Herbert Raberaba. The Panka family (Claude, Ivan and Nelson) also became landscape painters and was connected to the Namatjira family as their sister, Epana was married to Albert’s son, Maurice. The work of these artists was mainly produced from about 1938 until the mid 1970’s.
Rex Battarbee was later to comment that these younger men developed a style that displayed more freedom because of his lesser influence. As a result, they developed a more individualistic style than that displayed in Albert’s early work, often likened to Rex Battarbee’s.
After much popularity and media attention, Albert was granted Australian citizenship in 1957, entitling him to vote, buy and consume alcohol and own land and live in Alice Springs. Some say that this marked the beginning of the final phase of his life, which was characterised by disillusionment and alcoholism. There were pressures on Albert to share his wealth and possessions (including liquor) with family members, as taught in Aboriginal law. The white law that forbade the provision of alcohol to non-citizens, including his relations, complicated this. Inevitably, Albert’s health began to deteriorate.
In 1957, Albert was arrested and convicted for supplying liquor to relatives. Albert was sentenced to six months hard labour, but after two appeals his sentence was reduced and he served two months at the government settlement at Papunya in 1959. After his release, Albert returned to Papunya briefly. According to Rex and Bernice Battarbee in their book “Modern Aboriginal Paintings”, Albert’s last paintings were done during the last two months of his life spent at the Papunya Native Settlement in the heart of the Western McDonnells.
Many believe that the prison sentence “broke” Albert and that he lost his will to paint and live. Suffering from heart trouble, complicated by pneumonia, Albert died on 8 August 1959 aged 57 at the Alice Springs hospital. His wife Rubina died in 1974 when she was 71 years old. To this day, Albert Namatjira’s paintings are still highly sought by collectors and as a testimony to his enduring popularity, most of his paintings are held in private collections.