Painting by aboriginal artist sells for record £1m

A painting by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, one of the giants of the Aboriginal art movement, has set a new record price for the genre - but his family will not see one cent of the money.

More than 400 well-heeled dealers and collectors flocked to Sotheby's in Melbourne on Tuesday for the much-hyped sale of Clifford Possum's epic 1977 work, Warlugulong. It went under the hammer for $2.4m (£1.03m), more than doubling the previous record, set two months ago when a painting by the renowned artist, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, broke the $1m barrier for the first time.

But while the Aboriginal art market is "not so much booming as exploding", as one Australian commentator wrote yesterday, it is the galleries and auction houses that are benefitting.

Despite international acclaim, Clifford Possum - who was presented to the Queen in 1990 - was almost penniless when he died in Alice Springs in 2002. He originally sold Warlugulong for $1,200, and that was all that he ever received for it.

There have been calls for artists, or their estates, to be given a percentage of the sums for which their works change hands. But a parliamentary committee that conducted a year-long inquiry into an industry worth up to $300m a year dismissed the idea of "resale royalties" in a report last month.

Born in a dried-up creek bed in the Northern Territory, Clifford Possum was a stockman and skilled wood-carver before becoming a pioneer of the Western Desert style of "dot painting".

Aboriginals had been painting for millennia - on bark, on their bodies, and in the sand. In 1971 a white teacher, Geoffrey Bardon, gave brushes and paints to a group of men at a run-down desert settlement, Papunya Tula. They set down their ancient "Dreamtime" - or creation - stories on pieces of old board, and then on canvas. Clifford Possum was one of those men.

Few white Australians valued the paintings then, and it was another two decades before the market really embraced Aboriginal work. But Clifford Possum achieved early recognition, and by 1988 had been given a retrospective at the ICA in London. Two years later he went to Buckingham Palace, resplendent in a rented morning suit and painted tennis shoes, with a paintbrush stuck through the band of his top hat.

Warlugulong is one of five massive canvases that he produced in the 1970s, mapping his ancestral lands and their creation stories. It is regarded as one of his greatest works - and, by some, as one of the outstanding paintings of the 20th century. Had it received an export licence, it would undoubtedly have sold for far more. As it was, the National Gallery of Australia snapped it up.

But the work described as the "Sistine Chapel of Western Desert dot painting" was not always appreciated. After the original sale, it ended up in the collection of Australia's Commonwealth Bank, and languished on the wall of a cafeteria in one of the bank's training centres for 20 years. In 1996 it was bought for $36,000 by a dealer, Hank Ebes, who hung it in his home for a decade.

The painting's central story is that of the mythical Blue-Tongued Lizard Man, who started a bushfire after his two sons killed a kangaroo but failed to share the meat with him. Other sacred stories are woven around it.

Clifford Possum was awarded the Order of Australia shortly before he died.

Sotheby's Aboriginal art specialist, Tim Klingender, said: "It will be a while before this record is broken, because this is an amazing painting... it is a work of international significance."

Artists paid in wine, Viagra or old cars

Aboriginal art became popular in the 1970s, and now hangs in galleries and private collections around the world.

Commercial success has not come without controversy, however. Two-thirds of Aboriginal art is produced in impoverished desert communities in the Central and Western Deserts of Australia, then sent to dealers in Sydney or Melbourne, and overseas.

The artists, many of whom have no idea of the monetary value of their work, generally live in shacks and work in appalling conditions. A recent Australian Senate inquiry heard that many artists exchange their paintings for wine, Viagra or old cars. Some of them are trapped into sweatshop conditions in exchange for housing and food.

Aboriginal art has become highly covetable, with pieces now changing hands for hundreds of thousands of pounds.