Next step: perpetual copyright for Albert Namatjira’s family

The ownership of Albert Namatjira’s life in paintings is back where it belongs — with his family members.

Gloria Pannka, Albert Namatjira's granddaughter, at the Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands Art Centre in Alice Springs. Picture: Chloe Erlich.

Gloria Pannka still finds it hard to believe how the artistic legacy of her grandfather, legendary painter Albert Namatjira, was sold by a Northern Territory official to a white-owned publisher without her family’s knowledge. Recalling that highly contentious 1983 decision, Pannka, 65, says with a palpable sense of astonishment: “Nobody (from Albert’s family) knew about the sale, not even the eldest grandchildren.”

Pannka’s nephew, Clayton Namatjira, who last year won a Northern Territory young achiever award, reveals that he recently discovered how Albert’s second-oldest son, the painter Oscar Namatjira, was still alive when the copyright sell-off — decried as “unjust” and “shameful” — ­occurred. “(For a long time) I didn’t even know that,” says Clayton, sounding just as surprised as Pannka.

(Like his father, Oscar Namatjira belonged to Central Australia’s Hermannsburg school of landscape artists. He died in 1991.)

Eight years earlier, the Northern Territory Public Trustee, the executor of Albert’s estate, sold the painter’s copyright to Legend Press, based on Sydney’s affluent north shore, for $8500, without consulting the Namatjira family. For the next 34 years, Albert’s ­descendants did not earn a cent from reproductions of his works.

Namatjira, widely regarded as the father of the Aboriginal art movement, left behind one of the country’s most significant artistic estates when he died in 1959. Yet for several decades his children and grandchildren had no say in how this estate was managed. They had no control over how — or even whether — their famous forebear’s paintings were reproduced in books, films, posters, art catalogues or news footage.

The Australian recently broke the news that the Namatjira family had reached a landmark compensation deal with the Northern Territory government over the 1983 sell-off. The payout, combined with the historic handover of the artist’s copyright to the family late last year, resolved what was arguably the Australian art scene’s longest-running injustice.

Albert Namatjira.

Last October, in a development that was reported around the world, Namatjira’s copyright passed to his impoverished relatives for the first time, following a handover involving Legend Press and a surprise intervention and donation by entrepreneur Dick Smith.

Sophia Marinos is chairwoman of the Namatjira Legacy Trust, which looks after the interests of Namatjira’s descendants, most of whom live in impoverished, overcrowded households in Alice Springs and surrounding desert communities. Marinos said that while last year’s copyright transfer was “momentous”, the financial settlement, negotiated by prominent law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler on behalf of the trust, “is a tangible thing for the family and that’s what’s so great about it”. She described the copyright handover and the financial payout as “incredible”.

Through her previous job with campaigning arts company Big hART, Marinos was involved in eight years of on-off negotiations with Legend Press. For the Namatjira family, she says, the copyright transfer “was a massive relief and a celebration. This compensation is a relief in another way — it is directly addressing the financial loss of the individual bene­ficiaries. It’s another moment of closure for the family after years of questioning what went wrong and why.”

Mount Hermannsburg with Finke River Valley, painting by Albert Namatjira, c 1940. Copyright Namatjira Legacy Trust.

The payout will be shared by Namatjira’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Marinos ­reveals that “in recent months, we’ve had fairly comprehensive family meetings in Alice Springs to document beneficiaries”. Albert had 30 grandchildren, many of whom have passed away, and 28 of the grandchildren had kids of their own. “It’s a huge family,” says Marinos.

ABL lawyers worked on both negotiations pro bono, and senior partner Mark Leibler says: “While the settlement does not include any admission of legal liability, it is a tangible outcome for Albert Namatjira’s descendants and a credit to the NT government. The very existence of this settlement recognises that Australia has ­matured in the last 35 years, and can recognise the consequences of past decisions, which have an ongoing impact down the ­generations.”

As an investigation by The ­Australian revealed, the injustices clouding Namatjira’s legacy went deeper than the sell-off by the former NT public trustee, John Flynn, who has admitted he “may have stupidly not looked at the (sales) document closely enough” and wrongly assumed the copyright sale would only last for seven years.

Legend Press’s copyright control over Namatjira’s paintings was due to expire in 2009, 50 years after Albert’s death. But in a further blow to the family, the US-Australia free trade agreement extended Legend’s control by 20 years, to 2029. (This control ceased with last year’s handover.)

Legend Press has been accused of stifling Albert’s legacy by taking a highly restrictive approach to his copyright. The company ­denies that allegation but the ­National Gallery of Australia says it was ­unable to reproduce Namatjira’s paintings in any form ­between 2009 and 2017 because of copyright difficulties.

The copyright saga became even more notorious when ­archival research revealed how Namatjira, who had a limited grasp of written English, signed over a lucrative asset — seven-eighths of his copyright — to ­Legend Press, then run by art ­dealer John Brackenreg, for just £10, in 1957. The £10 deal, which gave Legend Press $7 out of every $8 earned from net sales of Namat­jira reproductions, would last for 26 years. “You can see it was a clearly exploitative deal,” says ­researcher and semi-retired lawyer Paul Watson. (Others see Brackenreg, who died in 1986, as the man who turned Namatjira into a household name.)

The copyright saga has ­uncomfortable echoes of the double standards Albert endured in his lifetime. In 1951 he was prevented from building a house in Alice Springs, and in 1957 he and his wife, Rubina, were granted citizenship but their children were denied that right.

Alison French, a leading Namatjira expert, says the settlement breakthrough “still hasn’t sunk in. Helping the Namatjira family fight this injustice has been a ­relentless struggle over three decades with many setbacks, so it is hard to believe the extraordinary set of events of the last 18 months.”

French says a Big hART play and documentary about Albert’s life and the copyright issue “gave the family a national and international voice” and “the seemingly impossible was finally made possible” with the copyright handover.

She acknowledges that Flynn’s admissions, first reported by The Australian, played a role in the settlement. “I remember my shock, sitting in the back of a car in Canberra, reading The Australian aloud to (family members) Gloria Pannka, Kumantjai L. Namatjira Lankin and Clara Inkamala … The story was John Flynn’s memories of the NT Public Trustee’s 1983 sale of Albert Namatjira’s copyright. I wondered how they would react. With surprising generosity of spirit, they acknowledged Flynn’s personal bravery in going public.”

Sadly, the Namatjiras’ relief over the copyright handover and compensation deal is tempered by grief. Just six days after last year’s handover another Namatjira granddaughter, who had been ­involved in the battle to regain control of her grandfather’s legacy, died. Kumantjai L. Namatjira Lankin, a talented Hermannsburg painter, was being treated for respiratory problems in hospital when she learned one of her adult sons had died. She passed away soon after.

Pannka, another gifted landscape painter who is battling diabetes-related health problems, says “we’ve waited a long time — and many family have passed away in that time, including my cousin, Kumantjai L Namatjira, who fought really hard for this. I would like to dedicate this achievement to her and her ­wishes that we move forward and build a strong future for Albert’s community.”

Pannka admits there were times during the marathon copyright negotiations when she lost heart and it “seemed change was not going to happen”. She is “thankful that now the Northern Territory government has stepped forward to compensate the family”.

Marinos says the Namatjira trust and ABL lawyers will now focus on lobbying the federal government for a perpetual copyright deal for Albert’s descendants. This would be a first for Australia. Copyright endures for 70 years after an artist’s death but perpetual copyright would give ­Albert’s descendants permanent control over his legacy. Marinos says such an arrangement would reflect “the unique stature of ­Albert Namatjira in the Australian art world” and the “extent of the losses” suffered by his family.

Clayton Namatjira, who has joined the board of the Namatjira trust, pays tribute to his aunts’ tireless copyright campaign, and says his extended family is “very happy their voice has finally been heard after years of campaigning. We can all move forward now.”