Copyright restored to poor family of Australian Aboriginal artist
SYDNEY: The impoverished family of Australia’s most famous Aboriginal artist, Albert Namatjira, has been given copyright to his works after years of fruitless campaigning triggered the intervention of a philanthropist.
Namatjira’s vibrant water colours are internationally celebrated for the way he captured the hues of the Western Desert in the centre of the country.
One of his paintings was given to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth in 1947 on her 21st birthday and he met the queen during her 1954 coronation tour in Canberra.
Dick Smith, the Australian businessman whose intervention secured the agreement, told Reuters it was the most satisfying philanthropic thing he had done.
“It’s a just cause,” Smith told Reuters in a telephone call on Saturday.
Born in 1902 in Hermannsburg, a remote Aboriginal community in central Australia’s West MacDonnell ranges, Albert Namatjira rose to prominence as the first Aboriginal artist to master a Western tradition.
In 1957, he sold partial copyright for his works to a friend, John Brackenreg.
Two years later, Namatjira died and his will passed the copyright remainder to his widow, Robina, and their children. This gave his family a source of royalty income when reproductions of the images were used.
However, his estate executors gave the administration of his will to the public trustee of the state of the Northern Territory, which sold the copyright to Brackenreg’s company, Legend Press, in 1983 without consulting the family, ABC News reported.
All royalty payments to Namatjira’s descendents ceased and when Brackenreg died, he passed copyright to his children.
Eight years ago, arts organisation Big hART, began campaigning for the return of the copyright.
They put together a theatre show called “Namatjira” which toured Australia for three years before travelling to London where in 2013 Queen Elizabeth met two of Namatjira’s grandchildren. — Reuters