Albert Namatjira Sold at Auction Prices

Painter, b. 1911 - d. 1959

Albert Namatjira’s paintings reflect the scenes of his childhood in the Northern Territory of Australia. Cattleman, horses with riders, and hunters were all key subjects in Albert Namatjira's prints. He was fiercely dedicated to depicting ancestral aboriginal locations, such as the MacDonnell Ranges, through his comprehensive watercolor paintings. His choice of detail and vistas suggested the combined influences of his Aboriginal roots mixed with classic European depictions.

The first exhibition of Albert Namatjira's paintings was held in 1937 at the Adelaide Exhibition of the Royal South Australian Society of Arts. His work attracted the attention of famous admirers, and in 1953 he was awarded Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation Medal. Desert-like, Central Australia scenes, done in rich watercolors, became popular pieces among Albert Namatjira's art for sale. Explore other lands and interesting areas of the world by viewing enchanting landscape paintings for sale from online galleries.

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sold
Sep. 05, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA 1902-1959
Est: AUD2,000 - AUD3,000
A woomera painted with a central Australia landscape scene, signed lower right. Watercolour over pencil on hardwood, with spinifex resin at one end and a kangaroo sinew-bound hook at the other. Inscribed verso: [Aboriginal Handicraft l Hermannsburg l Central Australia], and another smaller watercolour sketch of a goanna head. 73 x 13cm. Old repair to timber.
McKenzies Auctioneers
sold
Aug. 31, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA PRINT MT. SONDER
Est: AUD10 - AUD40
ALBERT NAMATJIRA PRINT MT. SONDER
Albion Antique Auction Centre
sold
Aug. 20, 2023
NAMATJIRA Albert (1902-1959), 'West from Simpsons Gap', W/Clr, 23.5x34cm
Est: AUD25,000 - AUD35,000
NAMATJIRA, Albert (1902-1959) 'West from Simpsons Gap' Signed 'Albert Namatjira' lower right. Titled and hand signed in ink verso. W/Clr 23.5x34cm PROVENANCE: The artist; Mr Eric Choat, Lambton N.S.W (purchased from the above); thence by descent, private collection ACT.
Davidson Auctions
sold
Aug. 17, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902 - 1959) - Central Australian Ranges; Portrait of Albert's Son, c1936 watercolour 20 x 31 cm (frame: 36 x 47 x...
Est: AUD20,000 - AUD30,000
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902 - 1959) Central Australian Ranges; Portrait of Albert's Son, c1936 watercolour 20 x 31 cm (frame: 36 x 47 x 2 cm) signed 'Albert' lower right | Provenance: Private Collection, Sydney (inherited by descent); Private Collection of Friderich Wilhelm Mattner (Member of the Finke Mission Board, and periodically worked in the Hermannsburg region between 1918 until 1947)
Lawsons
sold
Aug. 16, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA, GHOST GUMS, MACDONNELL RANGES, C.1950S
Est: AUD30,000 - AUD40,000
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902 - 1959) GHOST GUMS, MACDONNELL RANGES, c.1950s watercolour on paper on card 26.5 x 37.5 cm signed lower right: ALBERT NAMATJIRA PROVENANCE Private collection, Sydney Lawsons, Sydney, 21 November 2000, lot 134 (as ‘View of the MacDonnells’) Private collection, Melbourne Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne (label attached verso, stock no. 210041) Private collection, New South Wales, acquired from the above in 2001 EXHIBITED Annual Collectors' Exhibition, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 31 May – 14 July 2001 The Art of Buying Wisely, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 2001 © Namatjira Legacy Trust/Copyright Agency 2023
Deutscher and Hackett
sold
Aug. 16, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA, LOOKING WEST FROM GLEN HELEN, 1951
Est: AUD30,000 - AUD40,000
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902 - 1959) LOOKING WEST FROM GLEN HELEN, 1951 watercolour and pencil on paper 26.0 x 37.5 cm signed lower right: ALBERT NAMATJIRA inscribed on sheet verso: Looking / West from / Glen Helen PROVENANCE Dennis Connors (Newcastle Waters Station, NT), acquired in the early 1950s Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne, acquired c.1980 Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne, acquired in 2006 RELATED WORK Glen Helen Country, watercolour on paperboard, 25.0 x 34.0 cm, in the collection of Ngurratjuta Pmara Corporation Collection, Araluen Galleries, Alice Springs ESSAY Albert Namatjira was a naturalist and a tonalist, whose patrilineal totemic connection to the country bordering and north of Glen Helen ( Yalpalpe) and the Finke River ( Lherre pirntea) formed the bedrock of his art and provided plural meanings for those viewers who could read them. Landforms as discrete entities held a certain fascination for the artist. Whether they are large mountains or monoliths on a smaller scale, they also hold spiritual meaning for the traditional owners and, as with many locations in central Australian, can be read as both ‘sights’ and ‘sites’.1 Painted in 1951, Looking West from Glen Helen observes the distant ranges far to the west of Glen Helen Gorge and appears atypical in that the viewpoint is not framed by a gum tree or rocky outcrop located in the foreground. Presenting a more open horizontal and expansive experience of the landscape, the viewpoint is nevertheless carefully controlled by the artist who directs the viewer to the distant peaks through the placement of intervening mountain slopes in the middle distance. Namatjira’s familiarity with his country is evident in these long distant views ‘where peaks and monoliths provide a rich range of possibilities and responses that arise from constantly re-engaging with the same subject.’2 They also resonate with important personal symbolism for the artist as statements of belonging – as coded expressions embodying the memory and knowledge of traditional ancestral sites, of his totemic places. Landscape artist Lloyd Rees acknowledged this duality when he observed ‘I find in his [Namatjira’s] work a marvelous sense of distance and of space. His eye can look so far away and seem to know what’s there’.3 Wenten Rubuntja, artist and Chairman of the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority in Mparntwe, where Namatjira lived, explained the sensitivity to plural meanings required in the appreciation of Namatjira’s artworks: ‘we’re not photographers, taking pictures. The country has got sacred sites, that stone, that mountain has got Dreaming and himself is sacred country. Not just free mountain. We sing that one – we got that song. Well, the song is the history of the country. […] Albert Namatjira used whitefella’s side of the story – he painted landscape. He painted the Twerrenge (Dreaming) side there as well. Namatjira used two Laws’.4 1. French, A., Seeing the Centre: The Art of Albert Namatjira 1902 – 1959, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2002, p. 93 2. ibid., p. 96 3. ibid., p. 97 4. Rubuntja, W., cited in French, A., ‘We’ve Got to Follow that Old Man’s Tracks: Engaging with the Art of Albert Namatjira’, in Perkins, H., and West, M., One Sun One Moon: Aboriginal Art in Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2007, p. 159 CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE © Namatjira Legacy Trust/Copyright Agency 2023
Deutscher and Hackett
sold
Aug. 16, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA, GHOST GUM, CENTRAL AUSTRALIA, 1951
Est: AUD38,000 - AUD45,000
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902 - 1959) GHOST GUM, CENTRAL AUSTRALIA, 1951 watercolour and pencil on paper 26.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower right: ALBERT NAMATJIRA bears inscription on sheet verso: 17/4/51 PROVENANCE Acquired by Denis Connors (Newcastle Waters Station, NT), acquired in the early 1950s Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne, acquired c.1960 Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne, acquired in 2001 ESSAY Albert Namatjira’s painting of the central Australian landscape was both innovative and personal. However, contained beneath the cover of the western artform, the artist also made claim to his country, plural meanings can be seen to have existed within his paintings. His landscapes can also be read as memories of an ancestral site and through the reiteration of the subject, a claim of ownership is subtly asserted. Gum trees and mountains feature prominently in Namatjira’s work and Ghost Gum, Central Australia, 1951 is a prominent example of both a familiar subject to the viewer and a statement of belonging by the artist. Like much of Namatjira’s finest works, this watercolour evokes the artist’s distinctive compositional device with his much-loved, luminous white Ghost Gum typically dominating the foreground, and silhouetted against a dramatic rocky foreground of red and purple tones and the distant mountain ranges in blue. The Ghost Gum (Eucalyptus papuana), both the painting’s focus and a pointer to the distant landscape, is an incredibly hardy species. Known as ilwempe to the Western Arrernte, it grows in extraordinary inhospitable conditions and features in Aboriginal creation stories, in which individual trees can be considered to represent ancestral beings.1 Balanced on the left side of the composition and reaching beyond the picture, the majestic gum plays a pivotal role not only as a framing device and point of entry into the picture plane. More fundamentally perhaps, the signature cropped tree motif creates a tangible sense of being present in the landscape, of participating alongside the artist in seeing and identifying with the land – thus imbuing the work with an unmistakable intimacy. Through a combination of deep ancestral connection to Arrente country and his extraordinary compositional skills in representing country and the changing effects of the light, Albert Namatjira inspired a school of painting, having a major impact across Australia and creating some of the earliest bridges between Aboriginal and western cultures, which were to be reinforced by later forms of desert art. 1. French, A., Seeing the Centre: The Art of Albert Namatjira, 1902 – 1959, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2002, p. 121 CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE © Namatjira Legacy Trust/Copyright Agency 2023
Deutscher and Hackett
sold
Aug. 16, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA, PALM VALLEY, 1940S
Est: AUD45,000 - AUD55,000
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902 - 1959) PALM VALLEY, 1940s watercolour on paper 40.5 x 29.5 cm (sheet) signed lower right: ALBERT NAMATJIRA signed and inscribed with title verso: Palm Valley / Albert Namatjira PROVENANCE Private collection Henry Krongold, Melbourne The Estate of Paul Krongold, Melbourne RELATED WORK Palm Valley, James Range, 1945, watercolour over pencil on paper, 57.0 x 40.0 cm, Private collection, Adelaide, illus. in French, A., Seeing the Centre: The Art of Albert Namatjira 1902 – 1959, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2002, p. 111 Palm Valley, c.1936, watercolour over pencil on paper, 18.5 x 26.0 cm, in the collection of the Araluen Art Collection, Araluen Centre, Alice Springs. Gift of the late J. F. W. Schulz's grandchildren: Mrs M. Mertin, Miss E. Schulz, Mrs J. Chambers and Mrs A. Juttner. This painting was presented to Mr Schulz by Pastor Albrecht at the Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission. ESSAY From the creation of his earliest watercolours in the 1930s, Albert Namatjira provided the foundation for the later emergence of Indigenous art at Papunya forty years later and the flourishing that would follow. A household name by the 1950s, Namatjira’s evocative landscapes of inland Australia were fundamental to how Australians viewed their island home. ‘Namatjira's dramatic entry into the Australian art world was both inspired and inspiring. He inspired his own and subsequent generations of Aboriginal people and artists across Australia. In skilfully adopting the methods and materials of Western landscape painting he challenged the relegation of Aboriginal art to the realm of archaeology and ethnography. Namatjira became the most prominent Aboriginal Australian of his era and, in 1957, was the first Aboriginal person to be granted full citizenship.’1 Palm Valley, part of Namatjira's mother's country, is located in what is now known as the Finke Gorge National Park in the Northern Territory. ‘One of Namatjira’s most popular subjects particularly in the 1940s….some compositions focus on a single palm, the majority explore their relationship as a group in the intimacy of a closed environment…observed in specific light conditions.’2 In this work two central australian cabbage palms ( Livistona Mariae) emerge from dense vegetation and are silhouetted against the cloudless blue sky, towering above a rocky outcrop to the left and the still rockpool below. Known as Arrangkeye in Western Arrente language, the cabbage palm is an extremely rare plant, a remnant of a time when central Australia was much wetter and covered by such vegetation. Unique to this region, it is restricted to a small area of 60 square kilometres around the Finke River and its tributaries. During painting trips, Namatjira would return to the same site at the same hour every day in an attempt to recapture the same effect in an ever-changing environment. This work, painted in the heat of the afternoon, depicts the palm trees bathed in the strong light of mid-afternoon sun with little shade offered by the overhanging rock. The only visible relief from the heat is the cool water of the Finke tributary, shimmering at the bottom of the work. The art of Albert Namatjira is now understood to have inspired his own and subsequent generations of Aboriginal people and artists across Australia. Namatjira’s watercolours of Palm Valley encouraged successive generations to paint there, especially Walter Ebatarinja and his wife Cordula whose idiosyncratic depictions of Palm Valley record the site from their personal perspectives. Brenda Croft argues that the artist’s gift to indigenous and non-indigenous people is ‘more than the sum parts of watercolour paints on paper. It is an essence that resides in the strength of Namatjira’s work – his courage, his sorrow, his spirituality… where the enduring influence of this one man upon the entire indigenous arts and culture industry continues to be felt.’3 1. Watson, K., ‘Poetic Justice: an overview of Indigenous Art’, in Perkins, H., One Sun, One Moon: Aboriginal Art in Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2007, p. 20 2. French, A., Seeing the Centre: The Art of Albert Namatjira 1902-1959, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2002, p.107 3. Croft, B., ‘Albert’s Gift’ in French, A., Seeing the Centre: The Art of Albert Namatjira, 1902-1959, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2002, p. 148 CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE © Namatjira Legacy Trust/Copyright Agency 2023
Deutscher and Hackett
sold
Aug. 03, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA FRAMED PRINT
Est: AUD10 - AUD40
ALBERT NAMATJIRA FRAMED PRINT
Albion Antique Auction Centre
sold
Jul. 31, 2023
Albert Namatjira, Hermannsburg , Pencil on paper
Est: AUD3,000 - AUD5,000
Albert Namatjira Hermannsburg Pencil on paper This sketch was made by Albert Namatjira and given to schoolgirl, Rosemary Trepp, when the two were in Canberra during the visit by Queen Elizabeth in 1954, as detailed in the letter accompanying this Lot.
Theodore Bruce
sold
Jul. 25, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA 1902-1959
Est: AUD4,000 - AUD6,000
A woomera painted with a central Australia landscape scene, signed lower right. Watercolour over pencil on hardwood, with spinifex resin at one end and a kangaroo sinew-bound hook at the other. Inscribed verso: [Aboriginal Handicraft l Hermannsburg l Central Australia], and another smaller watercolour sketch of a goanna head. 73 x 13cm. Old repair to timber.
McKenzies Auctioneers
sold
Jul. 14, 2023
Albert Namatjira
Est: AUD100 - AUD150
5 Albert Namatjira Prints. All Framed. Three small 18x14cm. 1) Summer Grazing 2) Drying Sands Finke River 3) Blood Dod Tree Mt Giles. 4) One Medium unlabelled 5) One large unlabelled
Sydney Rare Book Auctions
sold
Jun. 28, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902-1959), Arrernte/Aranda language group, Glen Helen Gorge c1941
Est: AUD30,000 - AUD40,000
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902-1959) Arrernte/Aranda language group Glen Helen Gorge c1941 watercolour on paper 39.0 x 29.0 cm signed lower right: ALBERT NAMATJIRA
Menzies
sold
Jun. 28, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902-1959), Arrernte/Aranda language group, Finke River Valley, James Range c1944
Est: AUD25,000 - AUD35,000
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902-1959) Arrernte/Aranda language group Finke River Valley, James Range c1944 watercolour on paper 30.0 x 28.5 cm signed lower right: ALBERT NAMATJIRA bears inscription verso: 526 [illeg] Dodd school house/ Alice Springs/ 15 x 15/ Wed 26th/ June
Menzies
sold
Jun. 20, 2023
Albert Namatjira - Woomera, 1955
Est: AUD5,000 - AUD7,000
Albert Namatjira was born and grew up on the banks of the Finke River, in the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg west of Alice Springs. He was introduced to the Western style of painting in the early 1930s by visiting artists Rex Battarbee and John Gardner. In response to increasing tourist numbers after the extension of the railway to Alice Springs in 1929, the Arrernte people at Hermannsburg were encouraged to make a range of souvenirs for visitors. Between the 1930s and 1950s they sold everything from needlework and religious decorative items to artefacts including spear throwers, boomerangs, and spears.
Cooee Art
sold
Jun. 15, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902 - 1959) Central Australian Landscape watercolour 26 x 36 cm (frame: 62 x 71 x 3 cm) signed lower right
Est: AUD25,000 - AUD35,000
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902 - 1959) Central Australian Landscape watercolour 26 x 36 cm (frame: 62 x 71 x 3 cm) signed lower right
Lawsons
sold
Jun. 04, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA "AN EXTREMELY RARE SET OF SLIDES OF ALBERT NAMATJIRA "
Est: AUD8,000 - AUD12,000
a suite of never been printed or seen before Albert Namatjira and family slides taken by Leonard Long.
Phillip Caldwell Auctioneers
sold
May. 28, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902-1959), In The Macdonnell Range Central Australia, watercolour, signed lower right "Albert Namatjira", with University of Melbourne condition and treatment report verso, 26cm x 37cm, 45cm x 55cm overall
Est: AUD12,000 - AUD15,000
ALBERT NAMATJIRA (1902-1959), In The Macdonnell Range Central Australia, watercolour, signed lower right "Albert Namatjira", with University of Melbourne condition and treatment report verso, 26cm x 37cm, 45cm x 55cm overall
Leski Auctions Pty Ltd
sold
May. 25, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA FRAMED PRINT - GLEN HELEN LANDSCAPE, CENTRAL AUSTRALIA
Est: AUD10 - AUD40
ALBERT NAMATJIRA FRAMED PRINT - GLEN HELEN LANDSCAPE, CENTRAL AUSTRALIA
Albion Antique Auction Centre
sold
May. 22, 2023
Albert Junior Namatjira, , Untitled, Watercolour on paper
Est: AUD400 - AUD700
Albert Junior Namatjira Untitled Watercolour on paper
Theodore Bruce
sold
May. 02, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA 1902-1959 Glen Helen Landscape 1954 watercolour over pencil on paper
Est: AUD30,000 - AUD40,000
ALBERT NAMATJIRA 1902-1959 Glen Helen Landscape 1954 watercolour over pencil on paper signed 'ALBERT NAMATJIRA' lower right; inscribed '1954/ Glen Helen Landscape / TMARA-MARA GALLERIES / Rex Battarbee' verso 26.5 x 38 cm frame: Graham Reynolds, Brisbane (stamped verso) PROVENANCE Albert Namatjira, Hermannsburg, Northern Territory Tmara-mara Galleries, Alice Springs Private Collection Australian and European Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Ceramics and Sculpture, Christie's Australia, Melbourne, 1 August 1995, lot 209, illustrated Private Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above
Smith & Singer
sold
May. 02, 2023
ALBERT NAMATJIRA 1902-1959 Blackwood Trees at Rapid Creek, Darwin (1950) watercolour over pencil on paper
Est: AUD50,000 - AUD70,000
ALBERT NAMATJIRA 1902-1959 Blackwood Trees at Rapid Creek, Darwin (1950) watercolour over pencil on paper signed 'ALBERT NAMATJIRA' lower right; inscribed [another hand] 'Rapid Creek, Darwin' / 14 / 50 gns' verso 36 x 26 cm PROVENANCE Albert Namatjira, Hermannsburg, Northern Territory Private Collection, Sydney Private Collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above LITERATURE Robert Freeden, 'Namatjira Paints His First Seascape', The Australian Women's Weekly, Sydney, 16 September 1950, pp. 36, 37 (illustrated) Ken McGregor, The Life & Times of Albert Namatjira, Badger Editions, Melbourne, 2021, pp. 97, 328 (illustrated), 430
Smith & Singer
sold
May. 01, 2023
Lot Withdrawn
Est: -
Lot Withdraw
Colville Auctions
sold
Apr. 24, 2023
Albert Namatjira
Est: AUD120 - AUD150
The Art of Albert Namatjira by CP Mountford, published by Bread and Cheese Club Melbourne 1944, hardcover with dust wrapper, goo copy, wrapper a littletorn, minor foxing, tanning
Sydney Rare Book Auctions