Otto Pareroultja

1914–73

Otto Pareroultja was probably one of the first latent Aranda artists to see watercolours of Rex Battarbee and John Gardner exhibited in a schoolroom at Hermannsburg in 1934. Five years later, following Albert Namatjira’s example, Otto asked for watercolour lessons, as Battarbee commented:

Otto is keen to be an artist and I think he may be the most likely as he has brains and is a good worker and seems reliable … Otto is busy drawing by the fire this morning. I think I will try and get him to stick to crayons and he may find a market for his work at the station.1

The first solo exhibition of Otto’s work was held at the Athenaeum Art Gallery, Melbourne, in 1947, following the success of his younger brother Edwin’s first two solo exhibitions, also at the Athenaeum. From this point onwards Albert Namatjira and the two Pareroultja brothers were considered the three major figures of the Hermannsburg School. Otto, in particular, was singled out for his highly elaborate and patterned vision of country, enriched through his inclusion of broken forms and linear markings, perhaps reminiscent of Aranda designs. For some collectors Otto’s expressive brushstrokes struck a chord with work of the early modernists but Battarbee drew connections between the swirling parallel lines found in hills or tree trunks and the incised abstract markings on tjurunga (secret-sacred stone objects).

Here the artist depicts a heroic ghost gum at James Range, a site in his country, near a waterhole, which bears reflections of eucalypts from the middle ground. The foreground hills are criss-crossed with lines, wrinkles and cracks, reflecting Otto’s intimate knowledge of this terrain. He also captures the effects of strong sunlight on successive lines of hills, which change colour from brownish purple through mauve to blue, suggestive of distance, without losing any definition of form. The outlines of and shadows on distant hills remain sharp and finely etched, which gives the composition different points of focus.

1 Battarbee diaries, Friday, 21 July 1939, quoted in J. Hardy, ‘Visitors to Hermannsburg: An essay on cross-cultural learning’ in The Heritage of Namatjira, by J. Hardy, J. V. S. Megawa & M. Ruth McGaw, Port Melbourne, 1992, p. 167.

Judith Ryan