From suburban walls, old Namatjira watercolours deliver big time
Watercolour paintings by the late Albert Namatjira are coming off the walls of Australian homes where they have hung since the 1940s and ‘50s, and are fetching big prices at auction.
Namatjira shone in Deutscher + Hackett’s major auction of Indigenous art in Melbourne last week, when seven of the Arrernte artist’s watercolours totalled more than $600,000 (including 25 per cent buyer’s premium).
All bar one of the seven Namatjiras were fresh to the auction market, having spent their lives not in prestigious collections but in everyday family homes.
Some had been acquired directly from the artist in the 1940s and ’50s. Others were bought at his early exhibitions, where his prices ranged from 15 to 35 guineas.
From the time of his first exhibition in 1938 in Melbourne, where his works sold for between one and six guineas (about $120 to $720 today), Namatjira was embraced by Australians who had enough spare money to buy one of his popular outback watercolours.
Now those same watercolours fetch up to $250,000 (Waters of the Finke, 1958, sold for $200,000 at Smith & Singer’s Important Australian Art auction in Sydney in 2022).
The highest price fetched by a Namatjira at Deutscher + Hackett last week was $175,000 (including buyer’s premium, as do all sold prices in this article) for Central Australian landscape, c1944. The painting spectacularly beat its pre-sale estimate of just $30,000 to $40,000.
Central Australian landscape, in watercolour on paper on card, was from a private collection in South Australia. The painting was acquired at the artist’s Hermannsburg Mission in August 1944 by the vendor’s grandfather, according to the work’s provenance. Hermannsburg is in the Northern Territory, south-west of Alice Springs.
The grandfather bought the work while travelling through the Northern Territory on return from military service on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait. The work came to last week’s auction direct from his descendants.
“They were just a normal family in Melbourne’s northern suburbs,” Deutscher + Hackett Indigenous art specialist Crispin Gutteridge told Saleroom.
At the time the grandfather bought Central Australian landscape, Namatjira was already in the 1944 Who’s Who in Australia, and was the subject of a published monograph. He had started painting in earnest in 1936, after instruction in Western watercolour techniques by artist Rex Battarbee.
Some of Namatjira’s early newspaper critiques mourned the exactitude of his adoption of Western painting techniques, wishing that his work would lean more obviously into his Indigenous heritage.
But in her catalogue essay, consultant Lucie Reeves-Smith noted that each painting by Namatjira “was specific in its location, containing precise geographic and cultural reference points”.
Reeves-Smith wrote that Namatjira’s “luminous watercolours provided the artist with a continued patrilineal connection to Arrernte country north of Glen Helen (Yalpalpe) and of the Finke River (Lherre pirntea), a location of deep and continued significance to the artist”.
The second-best performing Namatjira painting in last week’s auction was Lot 53, Mount Gillen, MacDonnell Ranges, 1956. Estimated at just $30,000 to $40,000, Mount Gillen, MacDonnell Ranges fetched $137,500 after a round of spirited bidding.
A woman called Pearl Stephens had acquired the work directly from Namatjira in Hermannsburg in 1956. Her Sydney descendants were last week’s vendors.
While Namatjira performed extremely well, the late Utopia artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye fetched the top price of the night with a work in four separate panels. Called Awelye I, II, III & IV, 1995, the work fetched $437,500 – an amount towards the lower end of the $400,000 to $600,000 pre-sale estimate.
The work had appeared bold and vibrant on the walls of the auction house viewing room. But it had divided opinion among prospective bidders, and this was reflected in the ultimate price.
“People either loved it or they didn’t,” Gutteridge said. “Some people thought it was the most complete thing they’d seen, and others didn’t get it at all.”
The work makes direct reference to the traditional body paint designs used in ceremony by Kngwarreye and her people. Awelye I, II, III & IV was fresh to the auction market and had been held in a Canberra private collection.
The buyer had been excited to secure the panels at $437,500.
“They’re really bold. Standing in any room, they’ll just dominate it,” Gutteridge said.
A group of three Papunya boards that were once in the prestigious collection of John W. Kluge in the US, and sold by Kluge’s son through Sotheby’s Sydney in May 2014, were all bought by the same collector and will remain intact as a micro collection in Melbourne.
The top price among the three boards was $23,750 for Euro dreaming, c1973-74, by Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri.
All up, Deutscher + Hackett’s Important Australian Indigenous Art auction fetched total sales of $4,670,000, with 88 per cent of the 76 lots finding new homes.
The percentage sold by value was 120 per cent. This is based on total sales at hammer price, as a percentage of the total low estimates.
Other standout works in the sale included the cover lot by Rover Thomas. Langurr (The rainbow serpent) making the river, 1991, fetched $400,000 against the pre-sale estimate of $250,000 to $350,000. It was the second-highest price in the sale.
Timo Hogan’s Lake Baker, 2021, fetched $50,000. The artist’s exhibition, Kaṉparkanya – The Wanampi is on view at the National Arts Club in New York until April 23 and has given him international attention.
Lake Baker is the first of Hogan’s artworks to come to the Australian auction market. Its estimate was $30,000 to $40,000, so he is off to a good start.
Gunybi Ganambarr’s work, which features a spray-painted and intricately etched aluminium road sign, also sold well. It was estimated at $20,000 to $30,000 and sold for $43,750.
Other big names in the auction included Mawalan Marika, Paddy Bedford, Sally Gabori, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, Balang (Mr Mawurndjul) Nakurulk, Ginger Riley Munduwalawala, Freddie Timms, Daniel Walbidi and Owen Yalandja.