Deutscher and Hackett

Tommy McRae's drawings are of great significance as they offer rare insights into the Indigenous culture of the late 1800s and are a record of a local response to the increasing pace of change. McRae was a keen observer of the conduct of new settlers that surrounded him, and a man of deep reflection on the disappearance of his own people and culture. Working mainly in Northern Victoria on the Murray River in the vicinity of Lake Moodemere where he worked as a stockman, and in his later life, as an artist where he was, perhaps surprisingly, widely admired and supported by the local community. McRae's visual record was a rarity at a time of great change for the local Aboriginal population as the European settlers were progressively colonising the land and resources. McRae depicts traditional scenes of hunting, fishing and ceremony but many works also include depictions of Europeans, Chinese miners and the figure of William Buckley. Some of McRae's most animated and celebrated works are depictions of fights and warfare, an activity which was carried out according to a particular set of understandings.

Warfare between different groups was a highly ritualised affair with fighting between combatants continuing until exhaustion or until a third party, not involved in the skirmish, intervened. As noted by Andrew Sayers, Europeans who witnessed these fights remarked on how the confrontations resembled each other and that these conflicts rarely if ever resulted in death or serious injury.¹

Duellers follows a similar formal compositional arrangement to the artist's depictions of ceremonies. The delicate, decorative and frieze-like pattern of figures engaged in the battle move across the page as silhouettes. Spears, shields and clubs are raised above the men's heads and two pairs of figures engaged in conflict are shown at the extreme left and right. The silhouetted images of the fighters are typical of McRae's economy with the pen yet the gesture and movement in his drawings express all that is necessary to convey the story. As Sayers observes, McRae's 'keen sense of observation and a characteristic storytelling quality, often showing a wry amusement, combine in his drawings to produce an evocative art, full of vitality'.²

1. Sayers, A., Aboriginal Artists of the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, in association with the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1994, p. 34
2. Ibid., p. 49

CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE