James Arthur Murch was born in the inner Sydney suburb of Croydon on 8 July 1902. His father, James Murch, was a carpenter-builder who had emigrated from England. He attended Sydney Technical High School at Ultimo until 1916. On 7 May 1917 he waa apprenticed as a fitter to John Heine & Son, manufacturers of sheet metal. By the time he left them in 1924 he was working as an engineer’s draughtsman. He studied mechanical drawing at Sydney Techncal college, originally planning to make decorative architectural metal work. However in 1921 his uncle Harry, a glazier, was asked to make frosted glass so that the neighbours of the Royal Art Society classes would not be offended by their nude models.
He enrolled in the classes, studying under Antonio Dattilo Rubbo. Later he enrolled in sculpture classes at East Sydney Technical College, under Rayner Hoff.
In 1924 he abandoned engineering
visited the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg outside Alice Springs in 1933 and 1934 and painted portraits and landscapes, though most of his large portraits appear to belong to the 1960s, worked up from earlier drawings. He did a portrait of an Aborigine holding a boomerang (n.d.) illustrated in colour in Sotheby’s
Fine Australian and International Paintings catalogue, Melbourne 2-3 May 2000, lot 118. Other works influenced by Aboriginal art include
Crocodile n.d., ink on card, and
The Hunt c.1950, poster colour on card (both p.c.) in Baddeley cats 23-24. Daniel Thomas mentions a black crayon drawing,
Walila, Pentu Pui Tribe, Mount Liebig 1934, purchased by the
NGV in June 1934, and an oil painting of the same man in a landscape shown with the Society of Artists at Sydney in September 1934. Christine Nicholls catalogue.
Murch also obtained film footage in 1934 showing young Aboriginal artists reproducing the kangaroo design from the reverse of pennies and re-drawing the image as side elevation view (Jennifer Hoff, cited Lucienne Fontannaz 1995, p.9). Murch also noted the difference between the drawings of the Hermannsburg children and those of adults and children living outside the context of the Mission:
.what I did was prop [the paper] up on the easel like that which was not their mode of doing things and they just didn’t know how to handle it. I let them put it down on the ground. The mission children were used to things on easels and desks. (Arthur Murch, Interview with Jennifer Hoff, cited Fontannaz, p.9)
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2012
