Olive Pink became friends with Albert Namatjira after meeting him on her travels in Central Australia. She bought two early watercolour paintings from him when she visited Hermannsburg Mission in 1936. She treasured these paintings.

‘She followed Namatjira’s career with great interest and often met him in Alice Springs, where they talked as artist to artist.’
(from: Marcus, Julie ‘The Indomitable Miss Pink’ Sydney, UNSW Press, 2001 p.277)

Albert Namatjira

In a letter written on 2nd October 1959 to her old friend Dr. William Crowther she asked his advice about how best to ensure that her two paintings would go to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery when she died.

‘I would not exchange them [her two pictures] for any of his later work! Those I have, have a spiritual quality that his later work lacked. And a great simplicity of treatment. (There are also - on the back of each - a trial attempt of another scene!) When I bought them Albert said - with a smile. - “You are getting two on each for your money”!!! Those earliest paintings of his were not signed. Then he signed them “Albert” (only), when he had “arrived” - signed “Albert Namatjira.” (As you would have seen.)

When I decided to “Will” them to the Hobart Art Gallery (with two watercolours by Harold Southern), I showed his two to Albert and asked him would he care to sign the back with both his original signature and his later one? That he did, - in his usual pleasant way ( It would have been wrong to have got him to sign it on the front - as it was not done at the time I bought them. He was only “a beginner” then. But a brilliant one, - in his simplicity of treatment.

In my Will, I am getting my Trustees to offer them to the Hobart Art Gallery (When I die)... (But I want to keep them here while I am alive - as I love them. So I don’t want to submit them now.)’
(from her letter to Dr Crowther 2/10/59, Crowther Collection, Tasmaniana Library, State Library of Tasmania)

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