McDonnell Ranges.

Hermannsburg watercolour by Nelson Pannka of the McDonnell Ranges.

The Hermannsburg School was an art style, which began at the Hermannsburg Mission in the 1930s. 

The artists Reginald Battarbee and John Gardner exhibited paintings they made of the area in 1932 and again in 1934. Returning to the area in 1934 to paint the Macdonnell and James ranges, Battarbee and Gardner again displayed their work at Hermannsburg—this time for the benefit of the Aborigines. The representation of places familiar to the local Aranda (Arunta) people had a great impact; among the viewers was Albert Namatjira, then known simply as Albert, who asked for materials in order to do his own painting. He became the best known artist of the style. 

The Hermannsburg painters’ work is characterised by soft hues of their Western Arrernte landscape, which European settlers named the Western Macdonnell Ranges. Previously, Western Arrernte people had only used art in a ceremonial sense, as topographical interpretations of their country and their particular Dreamings, painted using symbols.  They conveyed this spiritual connection with the land which came from their intimate knowledge passed down for thousands of years. The Ghost Gum features prominently in the works, a sacred and important part of Western Arrernte mythology, often representing ancestral beings with body-like trunks and arm-like branches.