Lost artwork draws on harrowing story of Stolen Generation children

EXCLUSIVE

In 2004 a visiting Australian professor came across a collection of drawings, still in their boxes stored in the archives at a university in upstate New York in the USA.

Professor Howard Morphy’s remarkable find had sat in the archives, barely touched or seen, since they arrived at Colgate University almost 40 years earlier.

The boxes contained 127 drawings collected by Florence Rutter, an English philanthropist who first visited a mission school on the Carrolup Native settlement in southwest Western Australia in 1949.

Mrs Rutter, a widow, visited once more a year later and departed for the UK with it is believed, up to 300 drawings, mostly charcoal and pastel, with the intention of selling them to raise funds to benefit the Stolen Generation children at the mission school.

“She built a relationship with the children through letters, staying in touch helping them to keep their hopes and dreams,” Patricia Ryder, a senior cultural advisor at the John Curtin Gallery, told First Nations News.

“My grandfather was institutionalised at Carrolup in the 1920s, so this exhibition and the story of the school is very personal.”

Over a five-year period the ageing English benefactor held exhibitions of the Carrolup children’s drawings and a book, Child Artists of the Australian Bush, was even published in London to preserve the story of the children forcibly removed from their families.

Only 122 – later to be identified as 127 – were left when New York art collector Herbert Mayer purchased them from Ms Rutter in 1956 – and they were never seen in public again – until Howard Morphy’s discovery decades later.

The collection was donated to Colgate University in 1966, but it is still a mystery as to why they were never put on display.

And many more drawings have found their way into private collections around the world, including with royal families and even at the United Nations.

A year after Professor Morphy’s discovery Noongar men Ezzard Flowers and Athol Farmer visited Colgate to authenticate the drawings – that became known as the Carrolup Artworks.

Eight years later the drawings were returned to the care of Curtin University in Perth where extensive work was carried out to restore and protect the collection, with some of the drawings in poor condition.

And the drawings, now part of an exhibition – Once Known – at the old Perth Boys’ School on St Georges Terrace in the heart of WA’s State capital, tell a story of a colonial path long forgotten, but a path that saw children of mixed heritage forcibly taken from their homes to be ‘assimilated’ into western culture.

Traumatised by separation

Carrolup, about 300kms south of Perth, was one of nearly 100 government institutions involved in that period of segregation in WA.

The school had originally opened in 1940 then closed and reopened in 1945 as the story of these amazing drawings begins a year later with the arrival of teachers Noel and Lilly White.

State government records show that hundreds of Aboriginal children were detained at Carrolup between 1940 and 1950, many traumatised by separation, most never recovering.

But in their years at the school through the nurturing and guidance of headmaster Noel and his teacher wife Lilly, students produced drawings originally with charcoal from a fire, then chalk and pastels that at the time authorities back in Perth refused to believe were the creation of Aboriginal children.

Even after visits to see for themselves, State education authorities were still reluctant to accept the drawings as authentic.

“Officials in Perth thought the drawings were by either Noel or Lilly (White) and refused to believe they were drawn by the children,” Ms Ryder said.

“And money sent from the sales of some of the drawings by Florence Rutter helped to pay for more equipment, pastels and even oils.”

Once Known acknowledges the tragedy of the Stolen Generations and the enduring racism on Aboriginal people.

Of the 127 drawings in the collection, only 17 have known authors, the remaining 110 are unknown to this day.

Experiences of Stolen Generation children

“We would love to find out the names of the other authors,” Ms Ryder said. “By starting this story and this exhibition perhaps we will discover them.”

The Once Known exhibition brings together a group of carefully and professionally produced replicas – the originals are too frail to go on display and can only be viewed under strict control for fear of environmental damage – 23 drawings selected from the Herbert Mayer Collection of Carrolup Artwork, currently in the care of the John Curtin Gallery at the university.

“They are kept in an ‘art stack’ in climate controlled conditions to protect them,” Ms Ryder confirmed. “Many are fragile and perhaps in time more maybe exhibited.”

Once Known shines a light on the experiences of the Stolen Generations through the artworks created by children detained at the Carrolup Native Settlement in the 1940s.

“It is our hope to recognise all the child artists from Carrolup – for those that remain Once Known to become known once more,” curator of the exhibition Chris Malcolm said.

* The Once Known exhibition is a satellite exhibition of the Herbert Mayer Collection. John Curtin Gallery is the custodian of all 127 works of the Herbert Mayer Collection, not just those exhibited at 139 St Georges Terrace, or the Old Perth Boys School.

The exhibition open from 11am-4pm, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at the Old Boy’s School on St Georges Terrace in Perth until March 2026.