Napier Waller CMG OBE

Napier Waller CMG OBE (1893–1972), painter, graphic artist, teacher and stained-glass designer, studied art at the National Gallery school in Melbourne and first exhibited at the Victorian Artists' Society in 1915. At the beginning of the First World War he enlisted as an artilleryman and served in France from the end of 1916. Seriously injured at the battle of Bullecourt on the Western Front in 1917, Waller's right arm had to be amputated at the shoulder. After teaching himself to paint with his left hand, he produced War Sketches on the Somme Front, a series of sketches exhibited around Australia in 1918 and 1919. Waller went on to pioneer the linocut in Australia, exhibiting a group of linocuts in 1923. During a trip to Europe in 1929 he studied stained glass and mosaic, and back in Melbourne completed many stained-glass windows, mosaics and murals, including a 21-panel mural for the Melbourne Town Hall. Waller is best known as the artist who designed the mosaics and stained-glass windows for the Australian War Memorial's Hall of Memory, completed in 1958, his largest public work.