Paddy Compass Namatbara circa 1890-1973

Painted in West Arnhem Land circa 1960

G.W. Spence, Gardens Museum and Gallery, Darwin

Dr George Gill, Kansas, USA, 1967

The Spence-Gill Collection, Wyoming USA

Sotheby's, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 28 June, 1999, lot 110 (AU634)

Fiona Brockhoff, Melbourne

Crossing Country - The Alchemy of Western Arnhem Land Art, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, 25 September - 12 December, 2004

Cf. Wally Caruana et al., Old Masters, Australia’s Great Bark Artists, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 2013, pp.78 – 85, for illustrations of related works.  

In 1967 American collectors Dr Ed Ruhe and Dr George Gill purchased the contents of the recently closed Gardens Museum and Gallery, a private museum belonging to Mr G.W. Spence, situated in the Botanical Gardens, Darwin. In the collection were 110 bark paintings, 37 of which were acquired by Gill and the remainder split between Ruhe and Californian collector Louis A. Allen. This painting was part of Dr Gill’s collection up until its sale in 1999.

Paddy Compass Namatbara (Neiimburra) was of the Alurdju clan of the Iwaidja people, who resided in the 1950s and 1960s at Minjilang (Croker Island). He was one of a group of artists that included Yirawala, Mijau Mijau and January Nangunyari, whose paintings were acquired for major collections and museums by Karel Kupka, Dorothy Bennett and the anthropologists Ron and Catherine Berndt. He is renowned for his dynamic, twisting and entwined figures on bark that are similar to a type of rock art in the region. This example is finer in detail and sharper in execution than examples from the 1960s, indicating that it may be an earlier example from the 1950s.

The painting is framed behind Perspex and mounted in Perspex clips to a black cloth backing. The bark has been shallowly sliced across the whole about an inch 1 – 2cm below the upper margin possibly in an attempt to trim it at the time of production. There are eight holes pierced in the upper register and four in the lower where it would have been attached by wires when previously displayed. The painting has multiple abrasions , rubbing and pigment loss throughout the figures this is clearly evident in the photographs and the remaining pigments appear to remain stable. There is a crack 6cm long above the neck of the central figure and further fraying and further areas of cracking around the perimeter. There appear s to be no repairs or restoration.
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