Exhibition Events Calender
Sidney Nolan
Music and Theatre
13th - 20th August 2010
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Paintings that relate to Sidney's lifelong passion for music, opera and the ballet .
Sidney Nolan
Paintings
2nd May 2010 - 27th July 2010
9.30 - 5.00 Mon-Fri
1) Girl in Spotted Dress c. 1943
Oil on canvass 63.5 x 76.0 cms
This is a fleeting image of Sidney’s first wife, Elizabeth, in the ‘Little Desert’, which is an area in the Wimmera (in the west of the state of Victoria) of which Nolan was extremely fond. Sidney’s feelings towards her are still evident two years after their separation.
2) Boy and Dog (Wimmera) c.1943
Oil on composition board 94.5 x 64.5 cms
3) Landscape (Australia) 1988
Oil/ripolin on hardboard 122.0 x 154.0 cms
Sidney’s ability to portray the Australian landscape, from his gentle sketches on his trips with Howard Matthews to the majesty of his Central Australia works in the ‘50s, from the lush bush of his ‘Riverbend’ to the desolation of his ‘Drought’ series, has created a legacy that so accurately reflects the range and diversity of his homeland.
4) Figure and Landscape c.1982
Oil on hardboard 122.0 x 92.5 cms
5) Shot 1991
Oil on hardboard 122.0 x 91.5 cms
Sidney Nolan’s last painting. Kelly was tried and hung. This Kelly appears to have been shot in the act of surrender.
6) Myself 1988
Oil and Spray on hardboard 91.5 x 122.0 cms
The outline of the Kelly mask appears to be a particularly poignant expression of Sidney’s feelings towards the legend that eventually became ‘a millstone around my neck’. ‘Nobody knows my story but myself’, (found in Sidney’s hand on the back of a very early Kelly head now in the collection of the Heide Museum in Victoria). (Mary Nolan 2002).
7) Convict 1958
Oil on hardboard 95.0 x 125.0 cms
Fraser Island, a sand island off the coast of Queensland, is named after the sea Captain who was shipwrecked with his wife and crew members in 1836. Mrs Fraser was eventually rescued by a convict named Bracefell, after witnessing the death of her husband at the hands of local Aborigines. Mrs Fraser promised to intercede for Bracefell but she broke her word. Fortunately Bracefell anticipated her and he escaped to hide in the dense mangrove swamps and rainforest. Mrs Fraser and Bracefell are amongst the most deeply felt and symapthetically depicted of Nolan’s historical characters.
8) Rainforest 1957
Oil on hardboard 96.0 x 155.0 cms
9) Head VI (African) 1st. January 1963
Oil on hardboard 92.5 x 122.0 cms
Sidney Nolan visited Africa during the summer of 1962. In the first instance he travelled to Kenya where he spent several weeks studying, photographing and sketching the landscape and wildlife, something that he had wanted to do for many years. As time passed, however, he was drawn by an even stronger interest to journey further to explore the ancient city of Harar on the eastern border of Ethiopia.
For the last six years of his life Harar had been the home of Arthur Rimbaud, the romantic French poet. Sidney had been introduced to the poetry of Rimbaud by his friend, Howard Matthews, with whom he travelled and painted (particularly in the mountains of northern Victorian) in the late1930s. For Nolan this was the beginning of a lifelong fascination with Rimbaud and in 1982 he had a significant exhibition at the Nolan Gallery at Lanyon, under the title of ‘Illuminations’, of paintings relating to Rimbaud’s life and work.
10) Gazelle 1963
Oil on hardboard 122.0 x 122.0 cms
11) McMurdo Sound 12th September 1964
oil on hardboard 122.0 x 122.0 cms
Sidney Nolan had met with his friend Alan Moorehead, the Australian journalist and author, at the Adelaide festival in 1962 and Alan broached the idea of a trip to the Antarctic. It was possible for Moorehead, in his capacity as a freelance journalist for The New Yorker to arrange for himself and Nolan to join a select group embarking on a tour of US Naval and Scientific posts. The visit became the inspiration for Sidney’s series of paintings and the photographs that Sidney took and small water colour sketches that he made became a memory aid later in the year when he painted the series in his studio in Putney.
12) Mount Erebus 28th August 1964
Oil on hardboard 122.0 x 122.0 cms
13) Abstract (Red/Blue) 1986
Spray on canvass 305.0 x 457.0 cms
When Sidney began his late spray abstracts at The Rodd in the 80’s he recalled the red, black, blue and the stripes of early abstracts he had painted in Australia in the 1930s. He would refer to this as one of his important concepts. ‘Imagery’ can be found in the late abstracts, as in the flames of a fire, although Sidney himself gave some of the series distinctly descriptive titles such as ‘White Swans Flying Over The Karakoram Mountains’. Nether-the-less, they were for him his ‘Abstracts’.
Sidney had said on many occasions, referring to his return to abstract painting, “I must finish what I started”. (Mary Nolan 2006)