Dargie’s celebrated portrait of Albert Namatjira was acquired by the Queensland Art Gallery in 1957, the same year it was awarded the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This was the highest price paid by the Gallery for a painting to that date. By the time the artist sat for Dargie, his watercolours of the country around his home at Hermannsburg (Ntaria) in the Northern Territory had became very popular with the Australian public and were widely reproduced. In the intervening period, this portrait has become accepted as the iconic image of Australia’s most recognised Indigenous artist.