Otto Pareroultja, circa 1914-1973, UNTITLED (CENTRAL AUSTRALIAN LANDSCAPE)

watercolour and pencil on artist board  

signed 'Otto Pareroultja' (lower centre)  
74 BY 48.8CM  

Provenance: 
Painted in the Hermannsburg region, Northern Territory 
Private collection

Cf. Wayne Tunnicliffe, 'Otto Pareroultja', in Tradition today: Indigenous art in Australia, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2004, p.116 and Judith Ryan, Indigenous Australian Art: In the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2002, p.30, pl.26 (illus.) for a stylistically similar painting by the artist.
 
Otto's distinctive style is in evidence here; the landscape is transformed into a pulsating organic mass while following the conventions set down by the pioneer of the Hermannsburg school of watercolour painting, his kinsman Albert Namatjira. The snow gum on the left is situated in the very foreground of the picture plane, its canopy and base cut off at the edges of the work to create the sense of space to the hills beyond. The soft pastel hues in which the tree is rendered contrast sharply with strength of the colour in the hills behind. The linguist T. G. H. Strehlow singled out Pareroultja's depiction of ghost gums as being in close harmony with Ancient Aranda tales, according to which many of these old gums had arisen from poles abandoned on their travels by their original totemic ancestors. Strehlow went on to comment that Pareroultja's watercolours conveyed ''the same kind of distinctive Aranda feeling for balance, love of repetition and design, and sure sense of rhythm, that give such glorious vitality to their best verse' (Tunnicliffe, p. 116).