Summary

This work is one of a significant number of bark paintings commissioned by Walter Baldwin Spencer after a visit he made to Oenpelli in 1912. Oenpelli was a pastoral lease taken up in 1906 by the legendary Northern Territory figure Paddy Cahill, and when Spencer returned to Melbourne with thirty-eight works on bark that had been removed from the wet season shelters in the area of the East and South Alligator Rivers, he forwarded Cahill the sum of 99 pounds to make an extensive collection for the museum. The collaboration between these two men over the following decade would result in the commissioning of over 170 bark paintings being produced for the then National Museum of Australia.

Bark painters in western Arnhem Land generally painted spirits or figures that they had seen or know inhabit the landscape known to bining, the people of western Arnhem Land. The bark paintings in the Spencer Collection and the Paddy Cahill Collection are considered the most significant historical art works from western Arnhem Land, and often feature in national and international exhibitions and publications. These paintings take pride of place amongst the extensive and significant holdings of Aboriginal art in the Indigenous collections at Museums Victoria. Bark paintings were collected at Port Essington in the mid to late nineteenth century, and these are found in the collections of the British Museum in London (thought to be before 1868) and the Macleay Museum in Sydney (from around 1878).

Physical Description

A single sheet of eucalyptus bark, stringybark (Eucalyptus tetrodonta), painted with natural pigments. The image is of a male figure.

Significance

This is an extremely unusual work with the view appearing to be the back of the figure, as the figure has no eyes and the abstract patterning in no way resembles a face. Typically the distinctive features of the head and face is indicative of a specific spriti figure. By contrast, the designs featured on the ancestor's body are consistent with western Arnhem Land art practice of 'x-ray' art, the spine being clearly visible. The positioning of the ancestor's hands, arms and feet may indicate his movement or a turning motion, and while this 'school' of painting typically includes additional and exaggerated digits on both the hands and feet, this figure has five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot of what would appear to be normal proportions.

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