Battarbee and Namatjira

Battarbee and Namatjira is the biography of two artists, Rex Battarbee and Albert Namatjira. One is a white Australian from Warrnambool in Victoria, and the other is Aboriginal, of the Arrernte people, from the Hermannsburg Mission south of Alice Springs.

From their first encounters in the early 1930s, when Battarbee introduced Namatjira to the techniques of water-colour painting, through the period of Namatjira's popularity as a painter, to the tragic circumstances leading to his death in 1959, their close relationship was to have a decisive impact on Australian art.

This biography, illustrated with photographs, makes extensive use of Battarbee's diaries for the first time to shed new light on Namatjira's life and to bring Battarbee, who has been largely ignored by biographers, back into focus. Some of its findings may be controversial.

By moving between the artists and their backgrounds, and examining the nature of their friendship, Martin Edmond is able to portray the personal and social complexities the two men faced, while also illuminating larger cultural themes—such as the treatment of the Arrernte and Indigenous people generally, the influence of the Lutheran church, the development of anthropology, and the evolution of Australian art.

Find out more by watching Martin Edmond's short video series on Albert Namatjira's early work, Rex Battarbee, and Albert Namatjira. Battarbee and Namatjira has been reviewed on ABC Radio National's Weekends Arts programme and Books and Arts Daily.