Interesting People

Mervyn Napier Waller

Many people have walked through the Mural Hall in the Myer Department store over the years, but I wonder how many know about the artist. This magnificent tribute to women, was painted by (Mervyn) Napier Waller, one of Australia’s foremost exponents of large-scale public art. Melbourne has been described as ‘a gallery of Napier Waller’s work’, as there are eleven monumental murals by Waller on display in the central business district and at the University of Melbourne’s main campus. A gift for all Melburnians.

Mervyn Napier Waller not just an artist, he was a remarkable man. Born in the rural town of Penshurst, in 1893, to William Waller and Sarah, nee Napier, he spent his early years on his father’s farm and in 1913 enrolled in the National Gallery of Victoria.  Here he met Christian Yandell, also a student studying drawing under Frederick McCubbin and painting under Bernard Hall. They each won a number of prizes while at the Gallery school. But Waller’s career was interrupted by the Great War. In 1916 he and Christian were married at the manse of St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Carlton, before he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force.

While fighting at Bullecourt, Waller was severely wounded. His right arm needed to be amputated at the shoulder. While convalescing in France and England he taught himself to write, draw and paint with his left hand, stating that ‘… an artist draws with his head, not his hands.’ A remarkable achievement for a right handed person. Waller’s dedication to his art was extraordinary.

In late 1917 he returned to Australia and resumed his painting, now mainly in watercolours. Waller’s early work was strongly influenced by Pre-Raphaelite and late-nineteenth century British painters; his monumental works show an increasingly classical and calmly formal style, using timeless and heroic figure compositions to express ideas and ideals, sometimes with theosophical or gnostic overtones.

During 1918-19, Waller established his reputation as a talented artist through a series of war sketches which he exhibited in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart.

The Wallers built a house in Fairy Hills, near Ivanhoe, in 1922, which was also a studio for both artists. The architectural style of the house is a mixture of Interwar Arts and Crafts, Interwar Old English and Interwar California Bungalow. It is constructed from reinforced concrete walls with a rough cast pebbledash finish. The roof is steeply pitched with a prominent half-timbered gable over the front entrance and has Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles. There are small casement windows. External shots of the house were used as Dr Blake’s house in Dr Blake’s Mysteries television series. The National Trust offers pre-booked guided tours of the house which has an array of artwork from both Napier and Christian.

The first exhibition of linocuts in Australia was exhibited in 1923 by Waller. The Man in Black, is a self-portrait (showing both arms intact), a coloured linocut on cream wove paper. Waller is standing in front of the mural, Peace After Victory, whichhe made for the State Library of Victoria, completed in 1928.

Commissioned by the Menzies Hotel in Melbourne, Waller painted his first major mural in 1927. Unfortunately the mural passed into private hands when the hotel was demolished in 1969.  

The Melbourne Town Hall commission, in 1927, was the artwork be drawn directly onto the acoustic tiles. The classical and mythological figures outlined in sepia, give the effect of artists’ cartoons squared up for a larger work. Waller’s figures conjure up an ideal, classical world but have always defied specific identification. The 21 panels are located around the upper-storey walls.

Napier Waller’s significant personality is shown in the T&G Building. When the building was built in 1928, Waller completed a mural, entitled Better Than to Squander Life’s Gifts is to Conserve Them and Ensure a Fearless Future, which sits above the inner doorway at the Collins Street entrance. The mural pictures an old man, two women and a young boy in an orchard, with another figure in the background tending the land and watching the sheep.

On the east wall and above the stairs leading to the La Trobe Reading Room of the State Library of Victoria is Napier Waller’s mural Peach After Victory. Commissioned by the Library Trustees in 1929, this lighter classical scene of pastoral life is symbolic of peach, and is populated with figures in Greek costume, a mounted knight in armour and figures bearing trays of fruit.

In 1931, Sidney Myer, proprietor of Myer Emporium redeveloped his Bourke Street store. He created a chic European style ballroom on the sixth floor, to be used by patrons to dine by day and in which Myer could host Parisian fashion shows and hold exclusive Melbourne society events by night. The Myer Mural Hall, so called because of an impressive collection of ten murals by Napier Waller, was the realization of Myer’s dream. Painted at Waller’s home they were then transported to the store, eight of the murals are almost floor to ceiling, whilst the other two are smaller and located over the two side entrances. All paintings pay homage to the seasons and to women and their achievements through history in the areas of art, opera, literature, dance, sport and fashion.

Unfortunately, today the Myer Mural Hall is a private function centre and not open to shoppers.

Commissioned by Keith Murdoch, in 1932, Napier Waller’s mosaic on Newspaper House, Collins Street, I’ll put a girdle round about the Earth, is considered to be one of the most outstanding pieces of public art in Australia.

 Napier Waller installed the New Guinea Martyr’s window in St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, in 1947. The window was dedicated to the church for the centenary. It depicts the procession at the Consecration of Dogura Catherdral and the reading of the License of Consecration in 1939, Papuan men carrying a cross on a standard and candles, others in the background carrying banners depicting the crossed keys of St Peter, Agnus Dei, Chi Rho and Dove of Holy Spirit.

The Hall of Memory, set above the Pool of Reflection, is the heart of the Australian War Memorial, in Canberra. Napier Waller was chosen, in 1937, to create the decorative elements of the Hall. He began designing the five stained-glass windows which were installed from 1947 to 1950. It was Waller who suggested that each window be divided into five tall panels. His aim was “to produce through repetition, and a broad monotone of blue and grey, a serenity of effect with a dim cathedral light. At the bottom of each window are fragmentary remains from destruction and war”. Each of the fifteen panels features a figure in the uniform and equipment of the First World War.

Napier Waller worked on the mosaics from 1955 to 1958. Over six million tesserae were attached to sheets of paper by his art students and war widows in Melbourne, creating one of the largest single mosaics in the world. Despite having only one arm, he was actively involved in the entire process. These windows and mosaics represent the crowning achievements of an astonishing artist.

In January 1958, four years after Christian’s death, Waller married Lorna Reyburn, an artist, who assisted him in some of his projects.

Prometheus, is one of Waller’s most schematic and stylized mosaics. It effectively commands the foyer of Monash House. Deco-inspired style of mythologized figure crystallized the popular idiom for works of public art. Fire, earth, water and the release of energy, Waller’s towering male figure exudes raw unassailable energy in a confident display that clearly augers well for the commissioning.

In 1963, Commercial Union Assurance commissioned Napier Waller, aged 70, to create a mosaic for the entrance foyer to their building. The mural known as The Eight Aboriginal Tribal Headmen, depicts the heads of the Kulin nation, who on 16^th June 1835, were claimed to have made their marks on the  Batman Land Deed for the land on which the City of Melbourne now stands.

Napier Walled was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1953 and a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1959.

Napier Waller died at his home in 1972, aged 79.

Those who knew Waller described him as a modest, self-effacing man of considerable sophistication which could be attributed to his love of literature.