Lot 16: WATTIE KARRUWARA CIRCA 1910-1983 WANJINA C.1962 78 by 31cm Natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark Provenance: Painted at Mowanjum, Western Australia Private collection, Victoria Cf. For another depiction, c.1968, of a Wanjina attributed to Wattie

WATTIE KARRUWARA CIRCA 1910-1983 WANJINA C.1962 78 by 31cm Natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark Provenance: Painted at Mowanjum, Western Australia Private collection, Victoria Cf. For another depiction, c.1968, of a Wanjina attributed to Wattie Karruwara, see Davies, S.M., Collected: 150 years of and artefacts at the Macleay Museum, Sydney: The University of Sydney, 2002, illustrated at p.71, plate 81. Similar bark paintings from the same period by Mickey Bungkuni, also a Wunambal speaker, are illustrated in Berndt, R.M., C H. Berndt and J.E. Stanton, Aboriginal Australian Art: A visual perspective, Methuen Australia, Sydney, 1982. A photograph of Wattie painting on bark in 1975 is reproduced in Ryan, J. and K. Akerman, Images of Power: of the Kimberley, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1993, p.15. See also the artist's Wanjina Miaurdudu at Warrabi, c.1970, on composition board, p.25. In the 1960s the Wunambal artist Wattie Karruwara was one of the first at Mowanjum in the Kimberley to paint Wanjina for sale, using ochres on composition board and paper. He also painted some of the few images of Wanjina on sheets of bark of irregular shape. Painting on bark is not a traditional medium in the Kimberley, however bark paintings were made sporadically as early as the 1930s for the missionary J.R.B. Love and the anthropologist Helmut Petri, in attempts to mimic the Arnhem Land technique. Bark painting in the Kimberley is closely related to other forms of painting; on rock surfaces, on artefacts and on people's bodies in ceremony. Wattie's images of Wanjina are characterised by long vertical rays projecting from the head, small eyes and nose and delicate hands and feet. In 1972 Wattie was commissioned to replicate a rock shelter complete with paintings of Wanjina by the Western Australian Museum. Wattie is also renowned for the series of watercolours depicting his country and commissioned by the American anthropologist John McCaffrey in the mid-1960s that were a feature of Sotheby's 2003 sale.