Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Painted by the artist in 1971 for Tom McCourt
thence by descent
Private collection, Perth

LITERATURE
Tom McCourt, Aboriginal Artefacts, Rigby, Adelaide, 1975, p.52 (illus.), p. 53


For pastoralist Tom McCourt (1917-1981), Aboriginal history and culture were a life-long passion. His family had been graziers in the Beachport area of South Australia since the 1890s. As a young man he established his own property in the region where he came across historical Aboriginal sites that sparked a life-long pursuit to learn more about the art and artefacts of the Indigenous people. As a buffalo hunter in his youth, then later his work as a grazier would regularly take him further afield throughout the Kimberley and the Northern Territory where he began to study and record his findings, eventually publishing a book on the subject in 1975.

In his publication Aboriginal Artefacts, McCourt records a 1971 visit to the Kimberley where he encounters Wanjina artist, Charlie Numbulmoore whilst visiting Kurunjie Station. He describes the acquisition of this particular work as well as others which were on card and plywood: 'Charlie Numbulbor, who is now about 80 years old, is the only Aboriginal I know who will paint wandjinas. He painted one for me on the smooth concave side of a millstone eighteen inches long which I found on the Tableland Station. His method was first to paint the dish white, and then to execute the wandjina in red and yellow ochre and ground charcoal...While I was at Charlie Numbulbor's camp at Gibb River, I also bought the paintings he had in his hut. His work is childlike, but it has the same appearance as the paintings seen under rock overhangs out in the bush. Charlie has painted or touched up some of these in the past.'1

Francesca Cavazzini

1.Tom McCourt, Aboriginal Artefacts, Rigby, Adelaide, 1975, p. 52 (illus.), pp. 52-53