A pair of carved mountain ash portrait panels of an Indigenous Australian man and woman by Robert Prenzel, both signed and dated 1921, both bust-length, carved in very high relief, the bare-chested man in a laughing expression, the woman wearing a scarf and shawl and with a pipe from the side of her mouth, stained dark brown except her clothing with the eyes of both and the man's teeth painted white, the pine ground panel of each with a fine cross-hatched texture and also stained, each with its original fiddleback blackwood frame applied to the edges of the panel, both with incised signature and date 'R. Prenzel. 1921' lower right, each 69.5 cm high, 54 cm wide, approximately 11.5 cm deep. Provenance: acquired directly from Robert Prenzel in the 1920s by Gordon Gidney, Melbourne, thence by descent to the late John Gidney Pennell