Lot 68: - YIRAWALA , CIRCA 1903-1976 KUNAPIPI (SACRED AND SECRET) Natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark

Bears artist's name, catalogue numbers Y/4 and 8 on the reverse together with Gould Collection documentation attached to the reverse Natural earth pigments on eucalyptus bark

82 by 55.5 cm

Painted at Minjilang, Croker Island, Western Arnhem Land in the 1960s
Jerome Gould, Los Angeles
Private collection

The documentation on the reverse states that, "The painting represents a 'ceremonial drawing showing the great python killing and eating the two sisters and a child'.

Cf. For related paintings in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, see Holmes, S. Le Brun, Yirawala: Painter of the Dreaming, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1994, pl.119, 120. See also Serpent Swallowing Wagilak Sisters, and Wallaby, c.1968, in the collection of the Australian Museum, in Sutton, P. (ed), Dreamings. The art of Aboriginal Australia, Viking, Melbourne, in association with The Asia Society Galleries, New York, 1988, p.42, fig.64; and Katjailen the serpent devouring the child, n.d., in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, in Isaacs, J., Australia's Living Heritage, Lansdowne, Sydney, 2000, p.194, illus.

A regional variation on the Wagilag Sisters story that originates in the east and finds its apotheosis at Mirrarmina in central Arnhem Land, the encounter between the Sisters and the Giant Python shown here follows the pictorial conventions used in the east to depict the Serpent devouring the ancestors.