Painter, 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:
- 2009
