After an eight-month investigation, the National Museum of Australia has given the all clear to a contentious $1.3 million painting attributed to East Kimberley artist Rover Thomas and donated to the institution in 2020 through the federal government’s Cultural Gifts Program, which offers a tax incentive to donors.
The museum’s investigation into the painting, titled Jabanunga aka Goorialla(Rainbow Serpent) and dated 1996, was prompted by an article published in AFR Weekend in March in which several experts questioned the work’s quality, excessive valuation, provenance and mysterious 18-year absence from the public eye.
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Gabriella Coslovich is an arts journalist with more than 20 years’ experience, including 15 at The Age, where she was a senior arts writer. Her book, Whiteley on Trial, on Australia’s most audacious of alleged art fraud, won a Walkley in 2018.
