Sidney Nolan

Sidney Nolan
The Trial (1947): enamel on composition board; 90.7 x 121.2cm, National Gallery of Australia.
Born	Sidney Robert Nolan
Nationality	Australian
Known for	Painter
Notable work	The Trial The Slip Duck and Dog Hotel
Movement	Surrealism

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

Early life

Nolan was born in Carlton, a suburb of Melbourne on the 22 of aprill 1917. He was the eldest of four children. His family later moved to 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.

Personal life

Nolan 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 his marriage 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, 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 family and the former wife of John Perceval. He later studied at the Atelier 17, Paris, under Stanley William Hayter.

Career

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. Possibly also because she collaborated with Nolan on the paintings. Eventually, she gave them to the National Gallery of Australia in 1977 and this resolved the dispute. Nolan’s ‘Ned Kelly’ series follow the main sequence of the Kelly story. However Nolan did not intend the series to be an ‘authentic’ depiction of these events. Rather these episodes/series became the setting for the artist’s meditations upon universal themes of injustice, love and betrayal. The Kelly saga was also a way for Nolan to paint the Australian landscape in new ways, with the story giving meaning to the place.

Although the Depression and World War II happened during this period, Nolan decided to concentrate on something different other than people struggling in life. Nolan wanted to create and define episodes in Australian nationalism, to retell the story of a hero. A hero which now has become a metaphor for humankind — the fighter, the victim, and the hero — resisting tyranny with a passion for freedom. Nolan recognised that the conceptual image of the black square (Kelly’s helmet and armour) had been part of modern art since World War I. Nolan just placed a pair of eyes into Kelly’s helmet which animates its formal shape. As in most of the series, Kelly’s steel head guard dominates the composition. Nolan also concentrates on the Australian outback and shows a different landscape in nearly every painting. Nolan’s paintings give the audience an insight into the history of Australia but also show others from the world how beautiful Australia is. The intensity of the colours of the land and bush along with its overall smooth texture help create harmony between legend, symbol and visual impact. Kelly is in the centre of the painting but the colours around him help make him stand out. It’s a very simplistic picture but highlights that Ned Kelly is an Australian icon.

Nolan never relied upon one style or technique, but rather experimented throughout his lifetime with many different methods of application, and also devised some of his own. Nolan was inspired by children’s art and modernist painting of the early 20th century. During this time many younger artists were veering towards abstraction, Nolan remained committed to the figurative potential of painting. In terms of art history Nolan rediscovered the Australian landscape (Australia has not been an easy country to paint). His love of literature is seen as visually evident in Nolan's work. Other key influences were the modernist artists such as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Henri Rousseau. Locally the arrival of the Russian artist Danila Vassilieff in Melbourne, with his simple and direct art, was significant for Nolan.

In his series, Kelly is a metaphor for Nolan himself. Nolan, like the bushranger, was a fugitive from the law. In July 1944 Nolan faced the possibility that he would be sent to Papua New Guinea on front line duty, so Nolan went absent without leave. So when Nolan created this series he viewed himself as the misunderstood hero/artist like the protagonist, Kelly. ‘Nolan like this Kelly figure has also been a hero, a victim, a man who armoured himself against Australia and who faced it, conquered it, lost it…. ambiguity personified’.

Nolan’s Ned Kelly series is one of the greatest sequences of Australian paintings of the 20th century. His simplified depiction of Kelly in his armour has become an iconic Australian image.

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 1951, Nolan moved to London, England. He travelled in Europe, spending a year in 1956 painting themes based on Greek Mythology while in Greece. In Paris, he studied engraving and lithography with S. W. Hayter at Studio 17.

Nolan received a Harkness Fellowship in 1958 to study in the United States and spent two years there. He became friends with the port Robert Lowell and produced illustrations some of his books.

In England, Nolan attended the Aldeburgh Festival and become influenced by the organiser and composer Benjamin Britten, exhibiting paintings at the festivals. Ho continued to travel widely in Europe, Africa, China, Australia, and even Antarctica.

In 1981, Nolan was appointed a Knight Bachelor for service to art; he received the Order of Merit in 1983. In the summer of 1983, Nolan settled on the borders of Wales. The Sidney Nolan Trust was established in 1985 to support artists and musicians, and provide exhibition space for works by Nolan and others at The Rodd near Presteigne, Powys, Wales, near the border with England.

Nolan was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in 1988. He was also elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a member of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Nolan is also known for his theatrical set designs and book illustrations.

See also

• Visual arts of Australia

External links

• The Sidney Nolan Trust at The Rodd
• Sidney Nolan on Picture Australia
• [Nolan Collection at the University of Western Australia - includes a brief biography][This was a broken link and I am unable to find/offer an alternative one.]
• National Gallery of Australia - brief description of Ned Kelly painting series
• Biography of Nolan on Australia Dancing
• Sidney Nolan at Australian Art
• Sidney Nolan Prints at Gerrish Fine Art