The adventure began in 1991. That was the year Dr. Terence J. Gilbert, a distinguished physician in anesthesiology and critical care, found himself in Cairns, awaiting a flight to Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef. Almost idly, he stepped into a gallery. Two canvases were brought out – one by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, the other by Eunice Napangardi, partner to Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, one of the founding Papunya painters.

“It was a revelation. In that instant, I recognised what I wanted to live with, to surround myself with – art that would shape the rest of my life.”

Comparable, in his words, only to his first encounter with Caravaggio, it was the beginning of a journey that would come to define not only his walls, but his way of seeing.

From that chance encounter, his collecting took shape with remarkable clarity. He travelled widely – to Alice Springs, Arnhem Land, and beyond – and sought out Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art wherever it surfaced internationally, in London, New York, and further afield. His approach was guided by instinct and principle:

“It needed to be technically a good piece, but I also needed to love it. Otherwise I wasn’t interested. I didn’t want the derivative works. I wanted the best of what these artists could do.”

The results were transformative. Over nearly three decades, his upstate New York brownstone became, in his words, “an Aboriginal gallery.” Living with the works was central to his experience as a collector:

“There isn’t a day that I don’t look on every one of them and smile.”

At the heart of the collection stands the work attributed to Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, Water Dreaming, 1989 – a monumental three-metre canvas later described as “one of the crown jewels of the entire Australian Aboriginal art movement.” Shipped by Rodney Gooch to Mary Reid Brunstrom’s Austral Gallery in St. Louis in 1993, and acquired soon thereafter by Dr. Gilbert, the painting went on to achieve international recognition when it was chosen for the centre spread of Architectural Digest’s 1998 feature on Aboriginal art. For Dr. Gilbert, it was simply:

“Everything about the desert.”

Alongside Warangkula’s masterpiece, Dr. Gilbert assembled a distinguished group of early Papunya boards and Eastern Desert canvases, as well as a suite of monumental 1990s barks. Some works he shared more widely, through select donations and loans, extending their reach beyond his home and into the public sphere.

For him, these paintings carried a resonance unlike any other.

“It springs from the ground. It comes from the land, the land itself. It is born on the land.”

Now, as this collection comes to auction, a full circle is reached. These paintings – once revelations, then daily companions, and now works of international standing – will pass to a new generation of collectors. Dr. Gilbert’s journey as custodian draws to its close, but the life of the works continues: springing from the land, bearing its stories, and carrying forward the respect he always believed they deserved.