12 Facts About Napier Waller

Mervyn Napier Waller CMG OBE was an Australian muralist, mosaicist and painter in stained glass and other media.

Napier Waller is perhaps best known for the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, completed in 1958.

Napier Waller's parents were Australians Sarah and William Waller, a contractor.

Napier Waller left the local school aged 14 to work on his father's farm, then in 1913 began studies at the National Gallery school in Melbourne in drawing, under Frederick McCubbin, graduating to Bernard Hall's painting classes, winning ten prizes and exhibiting in 1915.

Napier Waller enlisted in August 1915 in the 22nd Infantry Battalion, later being transferred to the Artillery.

Napier Waller went into action in France as a bombardier in the 111th Howitzer battery of the 4th Division, Australian Imperial Force serving there from 1916 then in May 1917 at Bullecourt where he sustained wounds from an exploding artillery necessitating the amputation of his right arm.

Napier Waller took no major commissions during World War II, but worked mainly as an illustrator then, post-war, designed and completed the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, completed in 1958.

Napier Waller became senior art teacher in the Applied Art School of the Working Men's College, Melbourne.

On 6 May 1930 Napier Waller addressed the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects on Stained Glass and Its History.

Those who knew Napier Waller described him as a modest, self-effacing man of considerable erudition which could be attributed to his love of literature begun as a child, especially of Thomas Malory and William Morris; during WW1 he read James Macpherson and in the 1920s he read Homer and Virgil.

Napier Waller died in 1972, in Melbourne and his widow Lorna arranged for the preservation of the Napier Waller House through her will, which specified that her trustees establish it as a centre for the study of monumental art in Australia and prevent the sale or disposal of any artworks and artefacts kept there.

Napier Waller was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1953 and a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1959.