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Lot Essay
In August 1860, Burke and Wills set out on their heroic but doomed attempt to cross the Central Australian desert from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Eighty-seven years after Burke perished at Cooper's Creek, Nolan completed his first painting on the theme of the expedition.
For Nolan, who was irrevocably drawn to the combination of anti-hero and inhospitable landscape, the historical journey was to provide him with one of his most enduring themes. Burke and Wills first appeared in his oeuvre in 1948 and, like so many of Nolan's major subjects, he was to revisit the theme periodically in the ensuing four decades. In 1962, the year in which this work was painted, Nolan was living in London and his work was being exhibited in Australia, New York, London and Asia. In November of that year, he made a brief visit to Australia, which marked the first time he had returned home in five years. It is significant therefore that Australian subjects were still dominating his output.
In the introductory essay for the catalogue which accompanied Nolan's 1965 exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art, Alan Moorehead discussed the Burke and Wills expedition in the following terms: "Upon many counts it was an absurd business. Here you had a vast tract of land... almost the size of Europe, and no one knew what was to be found there... In any case it was a dangerous venture... to cross the continent on foot from north to south, a distance of some fifteen hundred miles, not to speak of the return journey - and one would have expected that the members of the expedition would have been experienced campaigners and scientists... They were nothing of the kind. John O'Hara Burke was a forty-year old Irish police officer of an impulsive and romantic cast of mind, a brave man and not unintelligent, but he was no bushman and he was hardly scholar enough to keep a diary. His young assistant John Wills was an able and precise surveyor, but with all his courage and loyalty somehow the flair for high adventure was lacking; he would have been more at home working in a laboratory." (A Moorehead, Sidney Nolan Recent Work, London, May 1965, p.4)
It is precisely this combination of absurdity and pathos that Nolan captures in his 1960s Burke and Wills paintings. While the title 'Explorer' suggests an adventurous pioneer, the image subverts the impression conjured up by the words. Alone against the stark backdrop of desert, Burke is at the whim of his camel, who chews blissfully on foliage while Burke is forced to perch uncomfortably atop his mount, seemingly at the edge of a precipice. While there is undoubtedly a comical element to the situation, the artist simultaneously conveys tragedy, for while the animal has the necessary biology and knowledge to sustain itself in this environment, the human being is stripped, vulnerable and defenceless.
While the palette is dominated by grey and brown, the painting is rescued from severity by the soft pinks and yellows and the brighter traces of blue and green. The paint is applied thinly, resulting in a washlike translucency that conjures up the shimmer of a mirage.
Nolan recorded his inspiration for works such as Explorer in a letter to Geoffrey Dutton: "I doubt that I will ever forget my emotions when first flying over Central Australia and realising how much we painters and poets owe to our predecessors the explorers, with their frail bodies and superb will-power." (Sidney Nolan cited in T Rosenthal, Sidney Nolan, London, 2002, p.122)
For Nolan, who was irrevocably drawn to the combination of anti-hero and inhospitable landscape, the historical journey was to provide him with one of his most enduring themes. Burke and Wills first appeared in his oeuvre in 1948 and, like so many of Nolan's major subjects, he was to revisit the theme periodically in the ensuing four decades. In 1962, the year in which this work was painted, Nolan was living in London and his work was being exhibited in Australia, New York, London and Asia. In November of that year, he made a brief visit to Australia, which marked the first time he had returned home in five years. It is significant therefore that Australian subjects were still dominating his output.
In the introductory essay for the catalogue which accompanied Nolan's 1965 exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art, Alan Moorehead discussed the Burke and Wills expedition in the following terms: "Upon many counts it was an absurd business. Here you had a vast tract of land... almost the size of Europe, and no one knew what was to be found there... In any case it was a dangerous venture... to cross the continent on foot from north to south, a distance of some fifteen hundred miles, not to speak of the return journey - and one would have expected that the members of the expedition would have been experienced campaigners and scientists... They were nothing of the kind. John O'Hara Burke was a forty-year old Irish police officer of an impulsive and romantic cast of mind, a brave man and not unintelligent, but he was no bushman and he was hardly scholar enough to keep a diary. His young assistant John Wills was an able and precise surveyor, but with all his courage and loyalty somehow the flair for high adventure was lacking; he would have been more at home working in a laboratory." (A Moorehead, Sidney Nolan Recent Work, London, May 1965, p.4)
It is precisely this combination of absurdity and pathos that Nolan captures in his 1960s Burke and Wills paintings. While the title 'Explorer' suggests an adventurous pioneer, the image subverts the impression conjured up by the words. Alone against the stark backdrop of desert, Burke is at the whim of his camel, who chews blissfully on foliage while Burke is forced to perch uncomfortably atop his mount, seemingly at the edge of a precipice. While there is undoubtedly a comical element to the situation, the artist simultaneously conveys tragedy, for while the animal has the necessary biology and knowledge to sustain itself in this environment, the human being is stripped, vulnerable and defenceless.
While the palette is dominated by grey and brown, the painting is rescued from severity by the soft pinks and yellows and the brighter traces of blue and green. The paint is applied thinly, resulting in a washlike translucency that conjures up the shimmer of a mirage.
Nolan recorded his inspiration for works such as Explorer in a letter to Geoffrey Dutton: "I doubt that I will ever forget my emotions when first flying over Central Australia and realising how much we painters and poets owe to our predecessors the explorers, with their frail bodies and superb will-power." (Sidney Nolan cited in T Rosenthal, Sidney Nolan, London, 2002, p.122)