Sidney Nolan

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Sidney Nolan, The Trial, 1947: enamel on composition board; 90.7 x 121.2cm, National Gallery of Australia.
Sidney Nolan, The Trial, 1947: enamel on composition board; 90.7 x 121.2cm, National Gallery of Australia.
Sidney Nolan: The slip (1947), National Gallery of Australia.
Sidney Nolan: The slip (1947), National Gallery of Australia.

Sir Sidney Robert Nolan OM, AC (April 22, 1917 - 28 November 1992) was one of Australia's best-known painters and printmakers.

Nolan was born in the suburb of Carlton in Melbourne. He was the eldest of four children. His family moved to the bayside Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. Nolan attended the Brighton Road State School and then Brighton Technical School and left school aged 14. He enrolled at the Prahran Technical College, Department of design and crafts, in a course which he had already begun part time by correspondence. From 1933, at the age of 16, he began almost six years of work for Fayrefield Hats, Abbotsford, producing advertising and display stands with spray paints and dyes. From 1934 he attended night classes sporadically at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School.[1]

He was a close friend of the arts patrons John and Sunday Reed, and is regarded as one of the leading figures of the so-called "Heide Circle" that also included Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Arthur Boyd and John Perceval.

In 1938,he met and married his first wife Elizabeth, but this soon broke up because of his increasing involvement with the Reeds. He joined the Angry Penguins in the 1940s.

After deserting from the army during World War II,[2][3] Nolan lived for some time at the Reeds' home, "Heide" outside Melbourne (now the Heide Museum of Modern Art). Here he painted the first canvasses in his famous, iconic "Ned Kelly" series, reportedly with input from Sunday Reed. Nolan also conducted an open affair with Sunday Reed at this time although he married John Reed's sister, Cynthia in 1948, after Sunday refused to leave her husband and marry him. In 1978, he married Mary Boyd, a member of the Boyd artistic dynasty and former wife of John Perceval.

He later studied at the Atelier 17, Paris, under the famous S. W. Hayter.

Nolan painted a wide range of personal interpretations of historical and legendary figures, including explorers Burke and Wills, and Eliza Fraser.

Probably his most famous work is a series of stylised descriptions of the bushranger Ned Kelly in the Australian Outback. Nolan left the famous 1946-47 series of 27 Ned Kellys at "Heide", when he left it in emotionally-charged circumstances. Although he once wrote to Sunday Reed to tell her to take what she wanted, he subsequently demanded all his works back. Sunday Reed returned 284 other paintings and drawings to Nolan, but she refused to give up the 25 remaining Kellys, partly because she saw the works as fundamental to the proposed Heide Museum of Modern Art.[4] Possibly also because she collaborated with Nolan on the paintings.[5] Eventually, she gave them to the National Gallery of Australia in 1977 and this resolved the dispute.

Paintings of Dimboola landscapes by Sidney Nolan, who was stationed in the area while on army duty in World War II, can be found in the National Gallery of Victoria.

In 1950 Nolan moved to London, England, where he lived until his death.

In 1981 Nolan was awarded Knight Bachelor for Service to Art.[1]

Nolan is less well known for his skilled theatrical set designs and book illustrations.

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[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Tremlett, Clayton (2006). Unmasked: Sidney Nolan and Ned Kelly 1950 – 1990 (pdf). Education Kit. Heide Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved on 2008-03-03.
  2. ^ Sir Sidney Nolan (1917-1992): Biography. Featured artists. Eva Breuer art dealer (2007). Retrieved on 2008-02-22. “1942-44 Conscripted into the Army, stationed in the Wimmera. Went absent without leave in July 1944”
  3. ^ Pearce, Barry (2007). Sidney Nolan: A New Retrospective. Unleashed. Australian Broadcasting Corporation: abc.net.au. Retrieved on 2008-02-22. “Nolan left the Wimmera in 1944, deserting the army for fear of being sent to the war front in New Guinea”
  4. ^ Burke, 350
  5. ^ Thomas, Sarah (2004). Cultivating Controversy (Review of Janine Burke, The Heart Garden: Sunday Reed and Heide). Retrieved on 2008-02-22. “Burke provocatively suggests that Sunday collaborated with him on some of his most famous works, the Kelly series among them. "The Kellys are Sunday and Nolan's swansong," Burke writes, "the last brilliant burst of their creative duet." What is most problematic here is that speculation " that Sunday painted the floor tiles and possibly the patchwork quilt in two of Nolan's paintings " is conveyed as fact. Burke's evidence is unconvincing, the main source being a quote from a subsequent letter from John Reed to Nolan, when the friendship between them had soured, that read: "Your paintings were part of your contribution [to Heide], even though you said Sunday painted them as much as you did " you said all your paintings were for Sunday, and I am quite sure you did not think of them otherwise. They were created with her in a sense which is almost literal, and it is certain without her, without your life at Heide, a great many would never have been painted." Surely the description of Sunday's contribution as being "almost literal" runs counter to Burke's argument?”

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