Robert Hannaford Jarinyanu David Downs

This portrait by Robert Hannaford is now in the collection of the National Library of Australia, Canberra. It depicts Wangkajunga and Walmajarri painter, printmaker and preacher Jarinyanu David Downs, shortly before his death in 1995. Born in the Great Sandy Desert around 1925, Downs was considered one of the leading lights of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement. Downs’ works express his strongly held Christian beliefs coupled with representations of Walmajarri story cycles and specific cultural sites.

Downs and Hannaford were introduced by a mutual friend and Downs sat for Hannaford ‘three or four times’. ‘The painting was done in quite a short time for me,’ said Hannaford. ‘I normally work more slowly. However, I wanted to catch the way he wore his clothes, the way he sat in the chair, and his eyes. Downs’ eyes are very deeply set so that they look almost closed but they aren’t and he was always watching me.’

The painting of Downs is one of two works Hannaford exhibited in the 1995 Archibald; the other is a self-portrait.