AustLit

'Vincent Namatjira, the young Arrernte artist who calls the tiny South Australian Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara community of Indulkana home, wanted to win the Archibald Prize for almost as long as he’s identified as an artist. Many Australian artists young and old want the same: one thing that marks the Archibald – at $100,000 no longer the country’s richest painting prize, but undoubtedly the one that carries the broadest recognition – is the wide range of painters, well known or not, who throw their hat in the ring each year. But Namatjira’s desire to join the ranks of previous winners, who include William Dobell, Brett Whiteley, Nigel Milsom and Louise Hearman, was about far more than youthful ambition. In 1956, the prize had gone to William Dargie, a once-famous mid-century portraitist of prime ministers and royalty, for his oil painting of Namatjira’s great-grandfather Albert Namatjira. Albert was a painter too, of course – for a brief time in the 1950s, he was arguably the most famous in the country – and the opportunity for a Namatjira to shift from passive subject to winning artist seemed to Vincent Namatjira too perfect to pass up.' (Introduction)