He served only two months, and died shortly after. Licensed by VISCOPY, Sydney 2001. Today synonymous with our vision of the Australian outback, Namatjira’s art nevertheless experienced many vicissitudes over the course of the last century. Albert Namatjira Palm Valley c 1945-49 Private Collection Adelaide, Banner: Albert Namatjira Mount Sonder, MacDonnell Ranges c 1957-59 (detail), National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. A favourite Collection: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Initially thought of as having succumbed to European pictorial idioms – and for that reason, to ideas of European privilege over the land – Namatjira’s landscapes have since been re-evaluated as coded expressions on traditional sites and sacred knowledge. Hermannsburg Mission was established by Lutheran missionaries in 1877 on the banks of the Finke River, west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). In 1957, Namatjira became the first Aboriginal person to be granted conditional Australian citizenship. More recently, he has accordingly received the recognition he so deserves with three biographies published, and three major exhibitions mounted by public galleries, including a retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia in 2002 to celebrate the centenary of his birth, Seeing the Centre: The Art of Albert Namatjira 1902-1959.Like many of Namatjira’s finest works, The Ghost Gum of Palm Valley, c.1943 evokes the artist’s distinctive compositional type with his much-loved, luminous white ghost gum typically dominating the foreground, silhouetted against a dramatic, brilliantly coloured backdrop of distant mountain ranges. | Saplings Read the latest visit information, including hours, Hermannsburg, Northern Territory, Australia No works can be copied from this site. Palm Valley. Ntaria Hermannsburg Mission | Intimate Palm Valley. His relations, including his children, were not permitted the same privileges. The National Gallery of Australia acknowledges the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, the traditional custodians of the Canberra region, and recognises their continuous connection to culture, community and Country. Death date and location . ALBERT NAMATJIRA in … For a better experience, switch to Desktop Version. Birth date and location . Closed Good Friday & Christmas Day, Update from the Gallery regarding COVID-19, Read the latest visit information, including hours, Tradition today: Indigenous art in Australia. This entitled him to limited social freedoms and to live in Mparntwe, although he was prohibited from purchasing land. He held The major site in the Charles Perkins, quoted on the 7.30 Report: McLaughlin, M., ‘A Report on the Life of Albert Namatjira’, 7.30 Report, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), broadcast, 3 July 2002.2. 37 x 54.2cm Introduction have painted there, especially Namatjira's 'nephew', Walter Ebatarinja. can be sought from the Art Central Australia 2008. Although his first solo exhibition in 1938 at the Fine Arts Society in Melbourne was a sell-out success, with popularity and fame continuing throughout his lifetime, praise for Namatjira’s skillful adaptation of a Western medium was inevitably accompanied by a bitter twist; his paintings ‘…were appreciated because of their aesthetic appeal, but they were at the same time a curiosity and sign that Aborigines could be civilised’.2 Ironically such perceived ‘assimilation’ would later bring his art into disrepute with Namatjira virtually ignored by the Australian art establishment during the 1960s and 70s.