Albert Namatjira
Australia 1902–59

Untitled (Central Australian landscape) c.1955–59
Watercolour and pencil on paper
Purchased 2019 with funds from the Bequest of Helen Dunoon through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation

Albert Namatjira conveys the time-worn topography and bright, clear skies of his traditional lands in radiant veils of watercolour. To this predominantly Western style of painting the Arrernte artist brings his own knowledge of Country.

In Namatjira’s compositions, the white trunks of the ghost gums – Corymbia aparrerinja – twist and arch, narrowing into graceful branches and elegant arrays of leaves. Rendered in a faint wash of gently dappled lilac or yellow ochre, the bark appears to glow, illuminated by the white of the paper beneath.

The celebrated gums of Namatjira’s watercolours often display multiple trunks emerging from a single lignotuber. In their companionable habit and sharing of resources, these ghost gums gesture to the larger interdependence of all lifeforms, to the environment we share with each other and with plants and trees as they replenish the air we breathe