Kartamiru (first born male), also known as Murlawirrapurka, King John and Onkaparinga Jack of South Australia

Theresa Walker and her sister Martha Berkeley were the first known European-trained women artists in South Australia, arriving on 10 February 1837. Walker became Australia’s most prominent woman sculptor of the nineteenth century and these wax medallion portraits of Kaurna people Mukata (Mocatta) and Murlawirrapurka (also known as Mullawirraburka, Kertamaroo and Kartamiru) were displayed at the prestigious Royal Academy in London in 1841. Remarkably, Walker was catalogued as a ‘sculptor’ not in the lower class of ‘honorary exhibitor’, commonly reserved for women artists at the time.

Murlawirrapurka – whose name comes from Murla (dry), wirra (forest) and purka (old man), but whom colonists called ‘King John’ – is known today as a diplomat who advocated for the rights of his people. He was one of several Kaurna men who taught Lutheran missionaries the local language, allowing for the revival of Kaurna language today. Like Walker, he was a frequent guest at the governor’s home, and inscriptions on the reverse of these original frames suggest they may have been given to Governor Gawler. The artist created multiple casts, including versions now held in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the British Museum.

Elle Freak, Associate Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture