Rover Thomas is widely regarded as one of Australia's most important Aboriginal artists. The first major solo exhibition of the work of an individual Aboriginal artist was the Rover Thomas exhibition in 1994 at The National Gallery of Australia. The seminal exhibition announced the emergence of a new style of landscape painting that moved beyond the dotted formats and more cartographic styles of the Papunya artists, who were highly influential during the new rise of interest in the collection of Aboriginal art.

In Thomas' paintings, visual fields of solid ochre colors, black tones and yellow or buff pigments were applied to canvas to suggest the features of the country. These were usually outlined with white pip...