Elder Wing of Australian Art: Audio Described Tour
Work 5 of 15

Theresa Walker and her sister Martha Berkeley were the first European-trained women artists in South Australia. They were professional artists who worked in several mediums and were particularly skilled in miniature portraiture – Martha executed painted portraits whereas older sister Theresa sculpted relief images in wax, an easily-worked medium for portraiture which had been popular in Britain since the late 1700s. During their careers, both sisters exhibited at the prestigious Royal Academy in London. They arrived in South Australia from England in February 1837, just six weeks after the colony was proclaimed, and their work here included historically significant early scenes of the settlement of Adelaide as well as commissioned portraits of many of the first colonists.

Among Theresa Walker’s best-known works from this time are her delicate wax portraits in profile of a Kaurna Aboriginal man and woman, whose names she recorded as Kertamaroo and Mocatta. Kertamaroo was also known as Murlawirrapurka and, to Europeans, as ‘King John’. Several copies exist of these paired medallions, as Walker was able to make moulds from her originals to produce multiple copies for sale. One pair was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1841; another was given in 1840 to the wife of the colonial governor George Gawler, who had appointed Murlawirrapurka as an honorary police constable. Murlawirrapurka also assisted German missionaries as they compiled a 2000-word vocabulary of the Kaurna language. A significant intermediary between Kaurna and Europeans, he is depicted in European attire, whereas Mocatta is seen in traditional Kaurna clothing. Walker’s elegant portraits present a sympathetic and nuanced image of Aboriginal people from this period of early colonial contact.

Kertamaroo, a Native of South Australia, and Mocatta, commonly known as Pretty Mary, a native of South Australia were created by Theresa Walker in around 1840 in Adelaide, South Australia.

Each of these two paired works consist of a white wax circular medallion featuring a sculpted portrait 9.2cm in diameter mounted behind glass in matching decorative frames 19.8cm square.

They are sculpted portraits of Kertamaroo, an Aboriginal man, and Mocatta an Aboriginal woman. They are depicted in side-profile, showing only the left side of their head and left shoulder. Centrally positioned, their torsos and arms are cropped at the bottom edge of the medallions.

Carved from white wax, the medallions have been created using the bas-relief technique in a classical portraiture style similar to the sculpted surface of a coin or sports medal. The detail-less background is flat, with the portrait itself raised up and moulded in three-dimensions – in these examples less than a centimetre in depth. Due to the shadows appearing under the brow, nose and chin, the portraits deceptively appear to have greater depth.

Kertamaroo has short curly hair and he wears a high collared loose shirt. He has a curling beard along his jaw line and under his chin, however his upper cheek, upper lip, and chin are hairless.

Mocatta has short wavy hair and wears a headband, two narrow simple lengths encircling her head. Fabric is wrapped around her upper torso and over her right shoulder, it folds across her chest and upper back, her left shoulder is bare. Appearing behind Mocatta is a long narrow pole, an Aboriginal woman’s digging stick, diagonally positioned it leans against her right shoulder.

The artist has created the curls and waves of hair in both portraits as simplified rounded moulded forms, rather than detailing the hair with fine lines.

Each medallion is mounted centrally in a brown wood frame behind a circle of glass. The square frames are covered with brown velvet, with carved decorative wooden forms placed on top of the velvet. Curving hook-like wooden shapes combine to form the petals and stamen of a simplified flower, mirrored and repeated in the four corners, the design encircles and points inwards to the medallion.