MASK AND MEMORY Sidney Nolan
A documentary produced and directed by CATHERINE HUNTER
A STUDY GUIDE by Julie Marlow
http://www.metromagazine.com.au
http://www.theeducationshop.com.au ‘One of the great lives lived in Australian art.’ – Patrick McCaughey, art historian
ABOUT THE FILM
ask and Memory is a film produced and directed by Catherine Hunter based on Ma retrospective of Sidney Nolan’s work curated by Barry Pearce that opened at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2007, an exhibition that travelled around the major art galleries of Aus- tralia in 2008. It is not meant to be an exhaustive portrait of Nolan’s work; rather a reflection on his life and art based on the paintings exhibited in this important retrospective.
‘A retrospective is much more than paintings on a wall, it’s the mapping of a life.’ – Edmund Capon, Director, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Along with Barry Pearce, the curator, and an exten- sive interview with Nolan himself shortly before his a daughter Amelda in 1941. He was a charismatic CURRICULUM RELEVANCE death in 1992, there are other significant interviews character, handsome and athletic. Barry Pearce with Lady Mary Nolan, Nolan’s widow; Jinx No- contends that he could have been a professional The themes and lan, Nolan’s adopted daughter; Edmund Capon, cyclist or athlete, instead, he chose to follow the discussion points arising Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and artistic path. in this study guide will be personal friend; Patrick McCaughey, art historian; relevant to teachers and students from middle to Janine Burke, author of many books about Heide; Nolan, from an early age, was desperate to go senior years of secondary John Olsen, Australian artist; Jean Langley, artist to Europe, and Paris in particular, to pursue his schooling studying these and friend of John and Sunday Reed; Elizabeth interest in art. In the late 1930s, in the search for subjects: Art, Media Harrower, friend of Cynthia Nolan; Jo Bertini, artist; sources of finance to pursue his travel ambitions, Studies, Australian History, Nolan’s daughter Amelda. he meets John and Sunday Reed, educated, Visual Communication and Design, Studio sophisticated and powerful patrons of the arts, Arts, Studies of Society The interviews and images in the film build up a who had created a bohemian salon in their idyllic and Environment / portrait of a complex and compelling artist who de- property Heide, by the Yarra River in Heidelberg, Human Society and its fined the Australian landscape on canvas in a new Victoria. Artists such as Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Environment. and visceral way. In the words of Edmund Capon, John Perceval and Arthur Boyd were welcomed at ‘our view of Australian landscape has been shaped Heide, where they were able to work, read, con- subconsciously by Nolan’. verse and play in equal measure, with their gener- ous benefactors, the Reeds. SIDNEY NOLAN – HIS LIFE COVER: Ned Kelly As a result of his fascination with the Reeds, his 1946, © National Sidney Nolan, born in 1917, was a working class marriage to Elizabeth deteriorated. Nolan be- Gallery of Australia boy brought up in the bayside Melbourne suburb came increasingly close to Sunday Reed and they
ABOVE: Self portrait SCREEN EDUCATION of St Kilda. His father was a tram driver who ran an became lovers. Elizabeth and Amelda moved out 1943, © Art Gallery illegal betting shop on the side. and her family forbade any further contact with his of New South Wales child. It was many years before they were recon- & The Trustees of the In 1938, when he was twenty-one, he married a ciled and were able to form a relationship. Sidney Nolan Trust fellow artist, Elizabeth Paterson, with whom he had 2 LEFT: Hare in Trap 1946, © Art Gallery of New South Wales & The Trustees of the Sidney Nolan Trust BELOW: Himalayas 1980s, © Art Gallery of New South Wales & The Trustees of the Sidney Nolan Trust
He and Sunday were in love, but she made it clear John Reed’s sister Cynthia (he’d met her briefly … there she would never leave her husband John. She at Heide), and begins a relationship with her that became Nolan’s muse, and made possible some of eventually leads to marriage. She is a writer, an seems to be his best-known works. intelligent strong woman; but at the same time, his no doubt lover’s husband’s sister. A confrontation between Nolan was conscripted into the army in 1942 dur- all of them at Heide leads to a final and painful rift, that the first ing the Second World War and posted to the Wim- which resulted in Nolan never seeing the Reeds mera, a flat, dry area of Victoria, which altered the again. Nolan says ‘it all led to tears in the end’. series of Ned course of his feelings about his art and the Austral- ian landscape. Being in charge of the foodstores at Cynthia assumes the mantle of muse. Nolan, Kelly paint- the Army base left him time to think and paint. In together with Cynthia and her seven-year-old his own words, ‘The Wimmera was a revelation to daughter, Jinx, whom he later adopted, travelled ings came me.’ Australia together, firstly to Queensland, where his out of his mining landscapes, paintings of outback towns and In 1944, Nolan – frustrated with the army and bush characters established him, in Barry Pearce’s relationship his forced absence from Sunday – deserted the words as ‘the iconographer of the continent’. army, fleeing to Heide and adopting a new name with Sunday (Robin Murray). Sunday had visited him regularly in the Wimmera, taking him paint and canvasses. [Reed] … He was reunited with the Reeds, resuming his relationship with Sunday. The books and paintings available in the library at Heide provided him with inspiration, and there seems to be no doubt that the first series of Ned Kelly paintings came out of his relationship with Sunday, painted on the dining room table at Heide.
Sunday was a controlling presence in his life, and Nolan’s relationship with the Reeds was complex and dramatic. He was acutely aware that he was being ‘kept’ by them both, and he began to feel suffocated and claustrophobic. Sunday was trying SCREEN EDUCATION to steer his art in certain directions; he felt manipu- lated and eventually his relationship soured.
In 1947, he makes a break with the Reeds and Heide, and goes to Sydney, where he seeks out 3 His prodigious artistic output at this time was partly motivated by his new surroundings, and partly in rage at Sunday, who, leading up to their break-up, had dared to suggest to him that without her he would not have ‘the joie de vivre’ to keep on paint- ing.
Nolan became obsessed with the story of Eliza Fraser, a survivor of the Stirling Castle shipwreck off the Coral Coast of Queensland in 1836. A series of paintings now widely regarded as misogynistic depictions of this woman, ‘a painting full of hatred and beauty at the same time’ (Barry Pearce). Al- though Eliza Fraser betrayed her eventual rescuer, a runaway convict, Nolan’s depictions seem to owe more to his feelings for Sunday Reed than his view of women in general. Barry Pearce says that ‘he used his paintbrush as one of the great haters’.
In 1948, a Government amnesty on deserters lifted bleakest work on the explorers, full of despair at ABOVE: Drought Nolan’s burden of his lawless desertion from the the harsh land and the tragedy of man’s attempt to Skeleton 1953, © Art Army, which freed him to travel extensively across tame it. Gallery of New South Australia recording the land. He went across to Wales & The Trustees the West with Cynthia and Jinx, and many of his In the late 1940s, Kenneth Clark, the influential of the Sidney Nolan paintings of this time were reflections of the land Trust English art critic, saw Nolan’s paintings in Syd- from above, from the mail planes they flew in to BELOW: Burke 1962, ney, met him and promised to help him settle in the Kimberleys and the Top End. Nolan took some © Art Gallery of New Europe, which the Nolans finally did in 1955. He excellent photographs which informed his Western South Wales had wanted to go to Europe for many years, but Australian landscape series. John Olsen, contem- was glad that he hadn’t as a young man – thank- porary and great Australian artist, comments that ful, because he may have ‘got lost in it all’ as he ‘we had to have our own art as Australians’. said himself, and lost his distinctiveness. He says, ‘the desire to go to Europe was a risky and schizo- Nolan developed a fascination with Burke and Wills phrenic attempt, to live in one part of the world and and their doomed journey, and painted some of his try to describe the other part of the world but that’s what I’ve done’.
He became an international artist in London. Patrick McCaughey, art historian, comments ‘he never tried to be an Englishman’. He made a great impact on the art world with a show in the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1957; it made his reputa- tion. The Tate Gallery bought several of his paint- ings, and included him in all their major shows of modern art.
In London, Nolan and Cynthia’s relationship gradu- ally deteriorated. Her daughter, Jinx, describes her mother as someone who was always writing, never without a notebook, but Nolan was not always painting. She felt she’d never realised her full po- tential as a writer because of her relationship with Nolan. For reasons unknown, Cynthia took her own life in 1976 after excluding Nolan from her will. Jinx describes how Nolan ‘closed the door’ on almost thirty years of marriage. The mid 1970s were the darkest and least productive period, until Mary Per- ceval reappeared in his life. Mary, sister of Arthur SCREEN EDUCATION Boyd had been married to John Perceval. But with her marriage to Sidney, Mary provided a stable and loving emotional life and was his salvation in later life; another strong woman. 4 In 1983, Nolan bought The Rodd, a seventeenth- century manor house in Herefordshire, near the Welsh border, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. He came back to Australia once a year, to look at the landscape and to store up memories which he then translated to canvas. He travelled the world so that he could ‘feel at home in the planet’. An interview with Nolan in 1992 revealed he had reached that state.
In November 1992, Nolan suffered a heart attack and died with his wife Mary by his side. She says ‘he simply vanishes and is no longer there’.
SIDNEY NOLAN – HIS ART
Barry Pearce, the curator of the 2007–08 Nolan place, Heide, his adopted home. She had encour- retrospective, says at the start of the film, ‘I always aged him to be more ‘modernist’ in his approach to ‘I can’t tell had respect as a curator or art historian for Nolan’s landscape. In this work, Nolan hides his lover in her achievement, but I didn’t love him’. However, the favourite rose bush in the garden, surrounded by you the curator of this major exhibition changed his mind – white blooms. There is a strong sense that he, and precise ‘I can’t tell you the precise moment, but I began to she, are both in concealment, reflecting their love love his paintings.’ affair (which certainly was not a secret to Sunday’s moment, husband, John). Jean Langley, an artist friend of St Kilda is depicted in many of his early works, his the Reeds at the time, recalls that no-one else but I began observation of his childhood surroundings finding would have guessed that Sunday and Nolan were expression in abstracts such as Luna Park and in lovers; they concealed their affair from their friends to love his the carefree humour of Under the Pier. and other contemporaries at Heide. paintings.’ Nolan’s Heide experiences and his love affair with The books and artworks displayed at Heide at the Sunday Reed were revealed in his paintings of time were a fertile source of inspiration for Nolan, – Barry the early 1940s, in particular Rosa Mutabilis. This especially a painting of Corot’s that shows a rear painting reveals his love for Sunday, and of the view of a horseman climbing a woodland path, that Pearce
ABOVE: Giggle Palace 1945, © Art Gallery of New South Wales & The Trustees oF the Sidney Nolan Trust LEFT: Rosa Mutabilis,
© Heide Museum of SCREEN EDUCATION Modern Art & The Trustees of the Sidney Nolan Trust
5 His affinity with Kelly is clear; Nolan saw himself as a rebel, an outlaw, and his deser- tion from the army rein- forced this.
Barry Pearce believes might well have influenced in front of it (the landscape)’, something ugly and the first and best-known series of Nolan’s Ned outside the comfort zone. He says ‘there was a lot Kelly paintings. that’s autobiographical, but I’m not going to point that out because it’s too complicated’. His affinity His time in the Army in the Wimmera completely with Kelly is clear; Nolan saw himself as a rebel, an altered the course of his art. Faced with the pos- outlaw, and his desertion from the army reinforced sibility of conscription, he deserted the Army, and this. went back to Heide, where he resumed his affair with Sunday, who had been a regular visitor to the Nolan used the black square in several series of Wimmera.
Nolan’s subsequent trips to Kelly country in northeastern Victoria also provided inspiration for the Kelly series of paintings, which has intrigued artists, historians, critics and the public since they were first shown. There is no doubt that this series also came out of his relationship with Sunday; she was his muse and collaborator. The series was painted in 1946–7 on the dining room table at Heide.
Nolan’s grandfather had been a police sergeant at Beechworth in Victoria, and had a lot to say about ABOVE: Luna Park Kelly and his outlaw days. 1941, © Art Gallery of New South Wales The style of the Kelly series is deliberately naive. & The Trustees of the There are some clear links between the Kelly paint- Sidney Nolan Trust ings and Nolan’s life.
RIGHT: Kelly 1956, SCREEN EDUCATION © Art Gallery of New In this series, Nolan started by depicting the South Wales & The landscape, and then putting something in front of it Trustees of the Sidney Nolan Trust to show the human observer; that something was in Nolan’s words ‘a black square abstract shape 6 Kelly paintings between the years 1946–1980, each in different styles. The image could be used to suggest ‘everyman’, from a national hero to defiant political commentary.
Edmund Capon contends that the Kelly in this first series is undoubtedly Nolan himself.
These paintings were completed at a time of great emotional upheaval in Nolan’s life. ‘The Kelly paint- ings were my goodbye to Melbourne’. He made the break with Sunday and Heide at this time. She saw his departure and subsequent marriage to Cynthia Reed as a complete betrayal of her love and her trust; Nolan felt controlled and stifled by Sunday towards the end of their relationship and needed to break free.
One of the final paintings in the Kelly series shows Ned Kelly being sentenced. He is in centre frame, defiant, his arms folded, a statement about his own series. He took some accomplished photographs frustrations at Sunday’s controlling nature. ABOVE: Central and 8mm film during this time, and many of his Australia 1950, © Art landscapes of this period are much less abstract Gallery of New South Mary Nolan says that the accepted wisdom that and are accurate descriptions of the colours and Wales & The Trustees Heide and the Reeds ‘made Nolan’ into a great contours of the outback, overlaid with his memo- of the Sidney Nolan artist is ‘nonsense’. ‘He was very productive before ries of the look of the country from the air as they Trust he went to Heide, he always was a painter’. She travelled to remote locations on mail planes. As BELOW: Pretty Polly says that Sunday Reed was very possessive. She John Olsen says they ‘confront you with the brutal Mine 1948, © Art wouldn’t give him back the Kelly paintings; she had reality of truth’. Gallery of New South a view that she was the co-creator. Wales As a result of his travel in Central Australia, he Following his trip around Queensland shortly after became fascinated by the doomed Burke and Wills the final break with Sunday, Nolan produced some expedition. The painting of Robert Burke on the of his most enduring images of the mining towns back of the camel is probably one of the most fa- he passed through, outback inns and harsh yellow mous paintings of his Burke and Wills series; even landscapes. These paintings were first exhibited in though Burke will die in this landscape, the scene the David Jones Galley in 1949, to great acclaim. is quite peaceful, a poetic depiction layered with the artist’s own interpretation of what Burke might His travels to Western Australia with Cynthia and have seen and felt at Cooper’s Creek. Jinx in the late 1940s produced some of his most dramatic landscape works in his Inland Australia When in London, despite his annual visits back to Australia, Nolan relied much more on memory to depict Australia from a distance, and this became a dominant theme in his work. His memories of child- hood, of the Australian landscape he loved, took on a more poetic and powerful dimension.
Nolan says in the interview on film, ‘Memory was an enormously powerful part of being a painter … the recalled image was almost as powerful as be- ing there’.
His late Kelly and Burke and Wills series and his paintings of Leda and the Swan and Gallipolli all depict tragic experiences. They are serious, formal and abstract. SCREEN EDUCATION
The massive Riverbend works reflect Nolan’s love of the Goulburn River, near Shepparton, where he spent time as a child. Ned Kelly is visible in these paintings, hiding among the foliage on the river- bank. 7 Barry Pearce returns to the parallels between No- and how in particular the first Kelly series could lan’s art and the troubled times in his life. He points be seen as a reflection of Nolan at that stage of The total out that in the second Kelly series there is a paint- his life in 1946–47. number of ing of Ned Kelly amongst the ruins of the Glenrow- 5. Research Heide and the Reeds, and their con- an hotel. The wallpaper strips hanging from the wall tribution to modern Australian art. Look at some paintings are exactly that of the paper in the Heide cottage of the other artists in their circle – Albert Tucker, and Pearce maintains that this painting represents Joy Hester, Arthur Boyd – and how they might Nolan paint- the ruins of his relationship with Sunday Reed. be said to be, along with Nolan, ‘modernist art- ists’. ed during Nolan’s late paintings reveal the calmer tranquil 6. Nolan’s naive style is a progression from his life he enjoys at The Rodd with Mary. Once again early abstract works. Look firstly at Luna Park his life is un- reflecting his travels, he produced huge canvasses, and then at artists such as the Spanish artist known, but spray paintings of Australian landscapes and the Joan Miro, and discuss their respective styles. mountains in China, where he spent some time in Then look at the style of the first Kelly series an accepted the 1970s. and the paintings of Douanier Henri Rousseau, the French artist of the early 1900s widely ac- estimate is The total number of paintings Nolan painted during cepted as the consummate naïve artist. Discuss his life is unknown, but an accepted estimate is what Nolan might have taken from these artists 30,000. He 30,000. He simply had to paint. Edmund Capon de- as inspiration. scribes him as saying his late paintings were ‘five 7. Barry Pearce examines the painting of Eliza simply had to minutes in the making, five years in the thinking’. Fraser in the film and discusses its misogyny paint. Mary Nolan says that he was upset that the ‘es- and the violence of it, but also its beauty. What tablishment didn’t accept his abstract paintings’. do you think he means by this? Research the He told her ‘I started life as an abstract painter and story of Eliza Fraser and consider how Nolan I must finish what I started’. The late works are could have linked this with his feelings at the reflected in Barry Pearce’s choice of large canvases time for Sunday Reed. such as White Swans flying over the Karakorams 8. Discuss the ‘black square’ and what it could (China) painted in 1986, almost a return to child-like represent other than Ned Kelly’s mask and depictions of abstract landscape. armour. 9. Examine the Burke and Wills paintings and the His late self-portrait, Self-Portrait in Youth (1986), events in history that these describe. What is is a ghostly evanescent echo of Mary Nolan’s your response to the paintings? How does the description of Nolan’s death, ‘he simply vanishes landscape make you feel, and what do you and is no longer there’. As Barry Nolan concludes feel for the explorer Burke on the back of the the film by saying, he seems ‘to vaporise as if in camel? another dimension’, a fitting end to this portrait of a 10. Discuss how landscape painting can evoke major twentieth century artist and complex mod- emotion in the viewer. How do Nolan’s large ernist man. landscapes make you feel about Australia? Inland Australia is a good example. POST VIEWING QUESTIONS 11. Look at Nolan’s later paintings and discuss how his life may have been influenced by travel. 1. What impressions do we take away from the 12. Discuss the correlation between the serenity film about Nolan? of his later landscape paintings and his more 2. Explore ‘the artistic temperament’ and discuss settled life. Do you think a more settled life what aspects of this temperament can be at- detracts from the power of his artwork? tributed to Nolan as seen in the film. 13. Nolan himself and Edmund Capon both talk 3. In the film, Patrick McCaughey, art historian, about the importance of memory in Nolan’s raises the question of the nature of patronage work. His paintings suggest that he has and the ‘patron-ised’, and the potential difficul- absorbed the landscape, but his memory ties arising from these relationships. This was has given the paintings their poetry and their evident in the complex personal and profes- individual voice. Do you think this is true? If so, sional relationship Nolan had with Sunday why? Reed, which ultimately led to their acrimonious 14. Think about powerful memories of your own split. Discuss the notion of artistic patronage, and how they might be depicted in an artwork. and what potential difficulties there could be in Discuss artistic technique as personal state- these relationships. ment. 4. Edmund Capon in the film says about Nolan’s SCREEN EDUCATION work that ‘The Australian landscape became the theatre of his drama’. Discuss this comment
8 Sidney Nolan day Reed. Became a foundation Sunday Reed presented her twenty- (1917–1992) member of the Contemporary Art five ‘Ned Kelly’ paintings of 1946–47 Society. Married Elizabeth Patterson to the National Gallery of Australia Biography 1940 Designed décor for the Ballets 1978 Married Mary Perceval (nee Boyd) in Russes production of Icare at the London Nolan is arguably Australia’s most signifi- Theatre Royal, Sydney 1982 ‘Paradise Garden’ series I of 136 cant and internationally acclaimed artist. 1942–44 Conscripted into the Army, sta- frames installed in the Concert Hall Kenneth Clark refers to him as one of the tioned in the Wimmera. Went absent stalls foyer of the Victorian Arts major artists of the twentieth century. He without leave in July 1944 Centre, Melbourne is well known for dramatic shifts between 1945 Embarked on first Ned Kelly paint- 1983 Sir Sidney and Lady Nolan pur- dark, moody themes and bright, uplifting ings and drawings chased ‘The Rodd’ on the Welsh creations. Always fresh and spontaneous, 1946 Travelled through ‘Kelly country’ in border of Herefordshire he never relied upon one style or tech- north-eastern Victoria and painted 1984 Visited Australia and Ireland nique but rather experimented throughout his well-known series of Ned Kelly 1985 Elected Honorary Member of the his lifetime with many different methods paintings, now in the National Gal- American Academy of Arts and of application, and also devised some of lery of Australia, Canberra Letters, New York. Acquired the five his own. 1947 Travelled to Queensland, including hundred acres of farmland sur- Fraser Island, Bundaberg, Cairns, rounding ‘The Rodd’ and estab- He commenced formal training twice Port Douglas and Cape York lished the Sidney Nolan Trust. Also through the National Gallery of Victoria 1948 Married Cynthia Reed. Travelled purchased ‘Earie Park’ jointly with School of Art but felt compelled to edu- in Central, far north and Western Arthur Boyd, a property with four- cate himself instead. One of his greatest Australia teen kilometres of river frontage on influences was the French Romantic poet 1950–51 Travelled in Central Australia, the Shoalhaven in NSW Arthur Rimbaud whose image has been and overseas for the first time to 1986 Announced his gift of approximately interpreted frequently in many of Nolan’s England, France, Spain, Portugal, fifty paintings to the people of Ire- paintings. A love of music and literature Italy land is evident in many of his works both the- 1952 Commissioned by the Brisbane 1989 Presented ‘Earie Park’ property to matically and visually. Courier Mail to make drawings of the Federal Government of Australia devastated outback drought lands, 1991 Elected to the Royal Academy, Lon- Several themes are captured in separate toured desert areas don periods and series of works such as 1953 Visited remote inland Australia and 1992 Died in London Gallipoli, the St Kilda period, Dimboola, the Birdsville Track. Returned to Leda and the Swan and the Sonnets. But Europe where he based his career Selected Solo Exhibitions perhaps the most powerful and recurrent from then on imagery is his iconic depictions of Ned 1956 Spent some months on Hydra, 1942 First one-man exhibition at Shef- Kelly, the idealistic bushranger and mur- Greece. Visited Gallipoli peninsula field’s Newsagency, Heidelberg derer well known in Australian folklore. 1957 Studied engraving and lithography 1943 Contemporary Art Society, Mel- This series began in 1945 and continued at ‘Atelier 1’ in Paris bourne to surface in different techniques through- 1958 Awarded a two year Common- 1948 Moreton Galleries, Brisbane out Nolan’s lifetime. wealth Fund Harkness Fellowship to 1948 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney ‘record the American scene’. Trav- 1948 ‘The Kelly Paintings’, Velasquez An avid traveller, Nolan spent time in elled throughout the USA, returning Gallery, Melbourne Greece and America and continued to to London in 1960 1949 ‘Queensland Outback Paintings’, visit Australia from his London base every 1961–62 Travelled to Egypt and Africa David Jones Art Gallery, Sydney year from the 1970s. 1964 Arrived in Sydney to join a US Navy 1949 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney expedition to Antarctica with writer 1949 Maison de l’Unesco, Paris, twenty- Nolan’s work continues to inspire much Alan Moorehead seven Kelly paintings academic and aesthetic thought, discus- 1965 Awarded Creative Arts Fellow- 1950 ‘Central Australian Landscapes’, sion and writing today and his images are ship, Australian National University, David Jones Art Gallery, Sydney reproduced extensively throughout the Canberra. Travelled to Queensland, 1951 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney world. New Guinea, Indonesia, Pakistan, 1952 Stanley Coe Gallery, Melbourne Afghanistan, Nepal, China. Moved 1952 Royal South Australian Society of 1917 Born in Melbourne to New York Arts, Adelaide 1917–31 Lived in bayside St Kilda 1971 Travelled to Australia for the Ad- 1953 ‘Drought Paintings’, Peter Bray Gal- 1932 Enrolled in Prahran Technical Col- elaide Festival, visited Alice Springs lery, Melbourne lege department of arts and crafts and the Olgas 1953 David Jones Art Gallery, Sydney 1934 Attended night classes at the NGV 1972–75 Travelled extensively 1955 Redfern Gallery, London SCREEN EDUCATION art school. Spent much time in the 1976 Wife Cynthia Nolan died 1956 Durlacher Bros, New York Public Library reading room study- 1977 Announced gift of 252 ‘Gallipoli’ 1957 Retrospective exhibition, ing European Modernists paintings to the nation through the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 1938 Met art patrons John and Sun- Australian War Memorial, Canberra. 1960 ‘Leda and the Swan’, Matthieson 9 Gallery, London 1989 ‘Sidney Nolan’s Drawings’, National Awards and Commendations 1961 Retrospective exhibition, Hatton Gallery of Australia Gallery, University of Newcastle- 1991 Retrospective exhibition, The 1958 Awarded a two year Commonwealth upon-Tyne Sidney Nolan Trust, ‘The Rodd’, Fund Harkness Fellowship 1962 Durlacher Bros, New York Herefordshire 1963 Appointed Commander of the Order 1963 ‘Sidney Nolan, African Journey’, 1991 ‘Sidney Nolan: Burning at Glen- of the British Empire, for services to Marlborough Fine Art, London rowan’, National Gallery of Australia, art in Britain 1964 ‘Recent African Paintings’, Bony- touring regional NSW and Victoria 1965 Creative Arts Fellowship, Australian thon Art Gallery, Adelaide 1992 Tate Gallery, London. 75th birthday National University, Canberra 1965 Marlborough Fine Art, London celebration exhibition 1968 Honorary Doctorate of Law, Austral- 1967 ‘Sidney Nolan Retrospective Exhibi- ian National University, Canberra tion, Paintings from 1937 to 1967’, Selected Group Exhibitions 1969 Britannica Australia Award for Art Gallery of New South Wales, contributions to arts, science and National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gal- 1940–46 Contemporary Art Society An- humanities lery of Western Australia nual Exhibitions 1971 Honorary Doctorate of Literature, 1968 Marlborough Fine Art, London 1946 Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Com- University of London 1970 ‘Retrospective Exhibition’, The Arts petitions, Art Gallery of NSW 1974 Honorary Doctorate, Leeds Univer- Centre, New Metropole, Folkesone 1948 The Sydney Group, David Jones Art sity 1970 ‘Sidney Nolan, Paradise Garden’, Gallery, Sydney 1977 Honorary Doctorate of Letters, Uni- National Gallery of Victoria 1948–50 Contemporary Art Society An- versity of Sydney 1972 ‘Paradise Garden’, Tate Gallery, nual Exhibitions 1981 Knighted for services to art London 1949–52 Archibald, Wynne and Sulman 1983 Order of Merit 1973 Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo Competitions, Art Gallery of NSW 1988 Companion of the Order of Australia 1974 ‘Ern Malley and Paradise Garden’, 1952–53 Blake Prize, Mark Foy’s Art Gal- Art Gallery of South Australia, lery, Sydney Collections opened by Prime Minister Gough 1952–53 Society of Artists Annual Ex- Witlam hibitions, David Jones Art Gallery, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 1975 Marlborough Fine Art, London Sydney Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 1975 ‘Nolan at Lanyon’, Lanyon home- 1953 ‘Twelve Australian Artists’, Arts National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne stead, south of Canberra Council of Great Britain, New Burl- Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane 1976 Moderna Museat, Stockholm ington Galleries, London, then to the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 1976 Pieter Wenning Gallery, Johannes- Venice Biennale of 1954 Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth burg 1953 ‘A Retrospective Exhibition of Aus- Australian War Memorial, Canberra 1978 ‘Nolan’s Gallipoli’, Australian War tralian Painting’, Art Gallery of NSW, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery Memorial, Canberra Sydney Australian National University, Canberra 1979 Marlborough Fine Art, London 1954 ‘Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker’, University Art Museum, University of 1980 ‘Sidney Nolan works on paper retro- International Press Club, Rome Queensland spective’, Nolan Gallery, ‘Lanyon’ 1957 Contemporary Australian Painters, University of Western Australia, Perth 1981 ‘Sidney Nolan’s China’, Art Gallery touring Canada Nolan Gallery, ‘Lanyon’ of New South Wales 1961 ‘1940–1945’, Museum of Modern Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne 1981 ‘The Ned Kelly Paintings 1946–47 Art of Australia, Melbourne Performing Arts Museum, Victorian Arts by Sidney Nolan’, Heide Park and 1962 ‘Australian Painting: Colonial, Im- Centre, Melbourne Art Gallery, Melbourne, inaugural pressionist, Contemporary’, Ad- Reserve Bank of Australia exhibition elaide, Perth, London (Tate Gallery), The Holmes a Court Collection 1982 Singapore National Museum and Art Ottawa, Vancouver ICI Collection Gallery 1962 ‘Rebels and Precursors: Aspects Wesfarmers Collection, Perth 1982 Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd, London of Australian Painting in Melbourne Tate Gallery, London 1983 Grosvenor Museum, Chester 1937–1947’, National Gallery of Hong Kong Land, Exchange Square, 1983 ‘Sidney Nolan: the city and the Victoria and Art Gallery of NSW Hong Kong plain’, National Gallery of Victoria 1984 ‘The Great Decades of Australian Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh 1985 ‘Sidney Nolan: Bourke and Wills’, Art: Selected Masterpieces from the Private collections in Australia and over- SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney JGL Collection’, National Gallery of seas 1986 ‘Nolan’s Wimmera’, National Gallery Victoria of Victoria, travelling exhibition 1985 ‘Recalling the Fifties: British Paint- Selected Bibliography 1987 ‘Sir Sidney Nolan: Landscapes and ing and Sculpture 1950–60’, Arts Legends. A Retrospective Exhibi- Council of Great Britain, Serpentine K. Clark and C. MacInnes, Catalogue tion 1937–1987’, National Gallery of Gallery, London of an Exhibition of Paintings from SCREEN EDUCATION Victoria, touring Sydney, Perth and 1988 ‘European and Australian Paintings 1947 to 1957 (exhibition catalogue), Adelaide from the Robert Holmes a Court Whitechapel A.G., London, 1957) 1988 ‘Nolan’s Fraser’, Queensland Art Collection’, SH Ervin Gallery, Syd- C. MacInnes, K. Clark and B. Robertson, Gallery ney Sidney Nolan, London, 1961. 10 N. Barber, Conversations with Paint- 1983. T.G. Rosenthal, Sidney Nolan, Thames ers, London, 1964. pp.83–100. R. Haese, J. Minchin and P. Mc- and Hudson, London, 2002. R. Melville, Ned Kelly: 27 Paintings by Caughey, Sidney Nolan: The City Eva Breuer Art Gallery, Woolahra, Syd- Sidney Nolan, London, 1964. and the Plain (exhibition cata- ney, NSW
With special thanks to Lady Nolan and The Trustees of the Sidney Nolan Trust.
This study guide was produced by ATOM. (©ATOM 2009) [email protected] For more information on Screen Education magazine, or to download other study guides for assessment, visit
For hundreds of articles on Film as Text, SCREEN EDUCATION Screen Literacy, Multiliteracy and Media Studies, visit