page_title: Napier Waller
section_title: Major works
hierarchical_section_title: Napier Waller / Major works
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of the Australian War Memorial dome.
context_page_description: Mervyn Napier Waller CMG OBE was a noted Australian muralist, mosaicist and painter in stained glass and other media. He is perhaps best known for the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, completed in 1958. However, Melbourne has been described as "a gallery of Napier Waller’s work", as eleven monumental murals by Waller are on display in the central business district and at the University of Melbourne’s main campus.
  The Australian Dictionary of Biography says his 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".
context_section_description: linocut The Man in Black (1926; a self-portrait, showing him with both arms intact)
  mural for the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne (1927; the building was demolished in 1969, and the mural was sold privately)
  murals at the Melbourne Town Hall (1927)
  mural Peace After Victory, State Library of Victoria (1928)
  stained glass window, south window, Wilson Hall, Melbourne University (1928; destroyed in the Wilson Hall fire of 1952)
  mural Better Than to Squander Life’s Gifts is to Conserve Them and Ensure a Fearless Future, T&G Life Building, Collins and Russell Sts, Melbourne (1928)
  mosaic The Five Lamps of Knowledge, Great Gate, Winthrop Hall, University of Western Australia (1931)
  mosaic I’ll Put a Girdle Around the Earth, Newspaper House, Collins St, Melbourne (1933)
  murals at the Florentino Restaurant, Bourke St, Melbourne (now Grossi Restaurant) (1934); executed by four of his students under his supervision.
  stained glass window, Wesley Church, Lonsdale St, Melbourne (1935)
  stained glass window, Wilson Hall, University of Melbourne (1935; hall gutted by fire 1952, then demolished, but the window survived, and is now the Leckie Window in foyer of the Ian Potter Museum of Art)
  mural Females Through the Ages for the dining hall in the Myer Emporium, Bourke St, Melbourne (1935)
  stained glass window, Orchid Window, Botany School, University of Melbourne (1937)
  stained glass window, St Mark's Anglican Church, Camberwell (1955)
  mural Australian Symbolic Figures, Royal Insurance Co, Collins St, Melbourne (1940; the building was demolished in 1969 and the mural was donated to the Architecture School at the University of Melbourne, where it is on display in the architecture library)
  mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra (1958)
  three stained glass windows for The Armidale School War Memorial Assembly Hall, Armidale NSW (1960)
  mural "Pioneer Chapel Memorial", St Andrew's Church, Brighton, Melbourne (1962)
  mural The Eight Aboriginal Tribal Headmen (1963; Temple Court foyer, Collins St, Melbourne, feared lost when an arcade put through in c1990, however, during renovations of a front shop in 2003 it was rediscovered, and reported to be displayed once more, but a new wall built in front instead)
  mosaic Prometheus (1967, Monash House foyer, William St, Melbourne, recently restored)
  portrait in oils of his friend and near-neighbour Norman Macgeorge held by University of Melbourne
caption: Detail of the dome from inside the Hall of Memory.
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