Narritjin Maymuru

Painted in Yirrkala, Northeast Arnhem Land

Rev. Edgar Almond Wells, Yirrkala, acquired circa 1961-1963

J. A. Davidson, Melbourne, presumably acquired from the above

Private Collection

Thomas Vroom, the Netherlands 

Private Collection, Brussels

Narritjin Maymuru is one of the outstanding masters of his generation of artists from Arnhem Land.¹ A painter and sculptor, he elaborated on the complex systems of Yolngu visual expression, symbolism and meaning. With its multitude of refences and visual puns, Garritjpi is no exception. On one level, the painting is a pictorial narrative from the Wangarr Ancestral past that depicts Ngulumun, a Manggalili ancestor at Garritjpi on Arnhem Bay; on another level it a treatise on Manggalili cosmology and ritual; it also a map of country and more besides. 

The focus of the painting is the yingapungyapu burial ceremony at the Manggalili homeland of Djarrakpi, on Cape Shield on the eastern coast of Arnhem Land, depicted in the upper register of the painting. In right section, the vertical ovoid form has several overlapping meanings: it represents a sacred Marrawili cashew tree; it replicates a ritual object decorated with a stylized map of the salt lake at Djarrakpi; and it also represents one of the major totemic beings of the Manggalili, Nyukal the Kingfish. The harbinger of death, Guwak the koel cuckoo, stands on top and to either side are the digging sticks of the Nyapililngu sisters, ancestors of the Manggalili clan, beside Marrngu the Possum whose fur the sisters spun into lengths of string used in rituals. Two yingapungyapu appear in the top left section with interred figures flanking a sacred Marrawili tree containing cicadas; the cicadas are also associated with the site of Djarrakpi. The two upper sections of the painting are separated by a Marrawili tree in the form of a ritual object also bearing images of the cicadas.

Ngulumun the great hunter is depicted in the central section of the painting with a yingapungyapu emblem painted on his torso. He is the kingfish Nguykal in human form. A great communicator, he hurls spears as messages to neighbouring clans. The lower third of the composition describes a traditional second burial at the inland freshwater site of Wayawpuy. In the ritual, the bones of the deceased are placed in a painted hollow log which appears vertically at the centre of the panel. To the left musicians play and below them are groups of mourners wearing painted designs.

Garritjpi was painted at a critical time in the history of the recognition of the rights of Indigenous people in Australia, and in the history of Aboriginal art. In the Yolngu homeland of northeastern Arnhem Land, Narritjin Maymuru was a ceremonial leader of the Manggalili who believed in the power of art to transcend cultures. Born before Europeans had entered the region, Narritijin was at the forefront of the accommodation of Christianity, introduced through missions in the 1930s. To mitigate the impact of the religion on Yolngu culture, in 1962 he along with clan leaders in the area, collaborated on two monumental paintings detailing the ancestral origins of their country. The painted panels were placed on either side of the altar in the newly built mission church to emphasise the continuing presence of Yolngu beliefs systems; the Sistine chapel of Aboriginal art. A year later, when the region was threatened by extensive bauxite mining, Narritjin was the main painter of four Yolngu bark petitions that were presented to the federal government requesting the recognition of the ancestrally endowed ownership of their land. The episode marked the beginning of the Land Rights movement in the Northern Territory.

The provenance of Garritjpi connects the work to the events described above. From the inscriptions on the back of the bark, written in the hand of the collector J. A. (Jim) Davidson, of Melbourne, the painting belonged to or likely hung in the home of the superintendent of the Yirrkala mission, the Reverend  Edgard Wells and his wife Anne. The Wells were advocates for Yolngu culture who not only encouraged artists to create work for a public beyond the community but collaborated with Narritjin and other clan leaders to install the painted panels in the mission church.²

Sotheby’s wishes to thank Howard Morphy for his contribution to this entry.

¹ Narritjin Maymuru’s paintings featured in the exhibition Maḏayin: Waltjaṉ ga Waltjaṉbuy Yolŋuwu Miny'ti Yirrkalawuy (Eight decades of Aboriginal Australian bark painting from Yirrkala, organised by Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection at the University of Virginia, in partnership with the Buku Larrnggay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala. The exhibition opened at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire and travelled to: the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington DC; the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach; the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville; and the Asia Society Museum, New York, from September 3, 2022, to January 5, 2025. See the exhibition catalogue edited by Wukun Wanambi, Henry Skerritt and Kade McDonald, published by Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Charlottesville, and DelMonico Books, New York, in 2022.

² Wells, A.E., This Their Dreaming: Legends of the Panels of Aboriginal art in the Yirrkala Church, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1971.