Artist Unknown WAMBIDDYER ANTEATER

Painted in Western Arnhem Land prior to 1928
Hans Heysen, The Cedars, Hahndorf, South Australia and thence by descent

Lionel Lindsay, Recent Watercolours of Hans Heysen in Art in Australia, Sydney: De Luxe Edition, Third Series, No 24. June 1928, Art in Australia Limited, p.6.

In his Art in Australia article on Heysen's recent watercolours, Lindsay refers to this painting as follows: 'Heysen brought back with him a blackfellow drawing of the Wambiddyer (ant-eater) painted on a dark bark with white, yellow and red ochres, and a blue black. The colour scheme is that of water colours painted in flat lighting and delightfully hints at the brotherhood of matter and universal relativities'. Lindsay is mistakenly suggesting here that Heysen collected this work on his recent painting expedition to the Flinders Ranges. Nevertheless, it is certain that this bark was created in Western Arnhem Land.

How this rare painting came into Heysen's collection remains uncertain. Heysen had a strong personal relationship with Sir Baldwin Spencer from the time of his first Melbourne exhibition in 1908. Spencer, with the assistance of Oenpelli resident, the legendary pioneer and buffalo shooter Paddy Cahill, assembled a collection of 170 bark paintings from the West Arnhem Land region for the Museum of Victoria in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Paddy Cahill is known to have taken leave in Adelaide in early 1919 and it is possible that Sir Baldwin Spencer introduced Cahill to Heysen at this point in time and possibly provided him with this bark painting.

 

The bark was not fired or treated by the artist prior to painting and remains soft and plyable, there is fraying and cracking to the edges and other areas of the surface and some fine strips of the upper bark missing. The bark has suffered many areas of pigment loss and appears to have some sort of mould on some areas of the surface. Most of these imperfections should be visible in the illustration
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