Lot 78: - DAWIDI , 1921-1970 WAGILAG SISTERS Natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark

Bears artist's name, title and descriptive hand written notes on a label attached to the reverse, together with the catalogue number DW17 Natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark

119.5 by 62 cm

Painted at Milingimbi, Crocodile Islands, Central Arnhem Land in the late 1960s
Private collection

Cf. For similar paintings of the Wagilag Sisters by Dawidi, see Wagilag Creation Story, 1963, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, and Wagilag Creation Story and the thundercloud before the first wet season, 1965, in Caruana, W. and N. Lendon (eds.), The Painters of the Wagilag Sisters Story: 1937-1997, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997, pp.44-45, pl.14-15 respectively; Wagilag Sisters myth, c.1968, in Mundine, D. et al, They are Meditating: Bark paintings from the MCA's Arnott's Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2008, p.100; and The Wagilag Story - The Singing Sticks, c.1960, in O'Ferrall, M.A., Keepers of the Secrets: Aboriginal Art from Arnhemland in the Collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 1990, p.62, pl.68, illus.

This is an archetypal image of the Wagilag Sisters chronicle, painted by the senior ritual leader of related ceremonies at the time of its creation. The central feature of the painting is Wititj the Python emerging from its waterhole to surround and swallow the Sisters and their children. The remaining elements depicted include the rain cloud of the first monsoon in the upper left, stars, creatures caught by the Sisters for food, the sand palm at the site emerging from the semi-circular waterhole, the dots of rain, and the footprints of the Sisters as they danced and sang in an effort to prevent Wititj from attacking them.