Best known as a landscape painter, Ernest Buckmaster also made many portraits, including this highly finished yet sensitive painting of Wulli Wulli tenor and activist Harold Blair AO (1924–1976). Born at Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve in Queensland, Blair began his career singing at local concerts while working on the cane fields. In March 1945 he sang on a radio talent quest, Australia’s Amateur Hour, gaining a record number of votes, and within months he was accepted by the Melbourne (Melba) Conservatorium of Music. He then studied at the Juilliard School in New York, performing in a benefit concert at the New York Town Hall in early 1951. Back in Australia, he appeared as a guest artist for the ABC’s three-year Jubilee Tour of Australia and later taught at the Melba Conservatorium. Increasingly focused on First Nations rights, he served on the Aborigines’ Welfare Board in Victoria in the late 1950s, and was involved in the Aborigines Advancement League, the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and the Commonwealth Aboriginal Arts Board. In 1973, he won praise for his performance in Dalgerie, the first ever opera staged at the Sydney Opera House.
Purchased 2010
© Estate of Ernest Buckmaster
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
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Drawn from the National Portrait Gallery collection, this salon-style hang references the lavish 18th- and 19th-century European salons where paintings were hung floor-to-ceiling.
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