entry from AASD:
Before the Fight - A War Dance c. 1890s
Ink on paper, bears inscription 'Before The Fight-A War Dance' in pencil in the lower margin, 24.1 x 34.4 cm, Est: $14,000-18,000, Sotheby's, Aboriginal & Oceanic Art, Melbourne, 15/11/2005, Lot No. 53
Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by George McMahon, a customs officer at Albury on the New South Wales/Victoria border, and then by descent to the vendor. Private collection, South Australia.

Reference: Sayers, A., Aboriginal Artists of the Nineteenth Century, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994, for several related examples. Cf. Fight Between Two Tribes, in the collection of the National Museum of Australia, Canberra, illustrated in Sayers, A., Aboriginal Artists of the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1994, p. 34, plate M4 The artist was commissioned by the new settlers to produce drawings of traditional life, ceremonies and hunting. McRae also chose subjects from Aboriginal history as well as those that reflected contemporary late nineteenth-century life in northern Victoria. Images of fighting are a recurrent theme in his work. Fights between tribes were highly ritualised affairs: The combatants prepared themselves, then one group would rush towards the other throwing spears and boomerangs. Then hand-to-hand combat would commence.