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Lot Essay
Late in 1964, after travels to Africa and Antarctica, in his London studio Sidney Nolan returned to his enduring and powerful theme of Ned Kelly. The quintessentially Australian symbol in Nolan's paintings of the 1940s was revered as "the noble legend of Ned Kelly With Nolan, Australian painting itself appears as a new revelation, full of instinct, of a primitive truth, abandoned to the joys of life."
(E. Lynn, Sidney Nolan, Melbourne, 1967, p.24). More than 15 years later, however, Kelly was transformed into a universal figure, his humanity rather than his heroicism the emphasis of the later paintings.
The 1964 series of approximately 25 works was the precursor to Nolan's Riverbend series, and formed the basis for the artist's exploration of this landscape. In Ned Kelly, the bushranger and his horse are situated at the base of a dense bushland hillside, its steep slope camouflaging two policemen in pursuit of Kelly.
The background serves as evidence of one of the artist's preoccupations at the time: the best means to create stereoscopic, almost three-dimensional images to give a sense of both panorama and depth. It was the French post-impressionist Paul Cizanne's painting Dans le Parc du Chateau (National Gallery of London collection) which provided Nolan with the solution. Nolan commented that "I noticed that Cizanne had very broken shapes that he cut through with the trunks of trees. The stereoscopic effect comes partially from the sudden placement of the straight edge against the mottled and divided background." (E. Lynn, Sidney Nolan - Australia, Sydney, 1979, p.130)
While Ned Kelly and other images in the series would provide Nolan with practical solutions to the problems of painting these stereoscopic scenes, it is the protean, ashen figure of Kelly in the foreground that demands attention. "It is a wan, reduced Kelly, a pale rider on death's pale horse, a pallid shadow of his once rumbustious and defiantly embattled self. His helmet, worn like a badge of battles long ago casts no aura, is more an identification tag than a symbol; he himself is more victim than vainglorious victor." (E. Lynn, Sidney Nolan, London, 1967, p.48)
The naked, pale Kelly on his horse is far removed from the triumphal, brightly coloured images of the 1940s works. The air of menace created by the armed policemen, and the precipitous slope of the hillside, shrink the Ned Kelly in these later images both literally and metaphorically, from his pre-eminent position in Nolan's 1946 work of the same title, Ned Kelly (National Gallery of Australia collection).
(E. Lynn, Sidney Nolan, Melbourne, 1967, p.24). More than 15 years later, however, Kelly was transformed into a universal figure, his humanity rather than his heroicism the emphasis of the later paintings.
The 1964 series of approximately 25 works was the precursor to Nolan's Riverbend series, and formed the basis for the artist's exploration of this landscape. In Ned Kelly, the bushranger and his horse are situated at the base of a dense bushland hillside, its steep slope camouflaging two policemen in pursuit of Kelly.
The background serves as evidence of one of the artist's preoccupations at the time: the best means to create stereoscopic, almost three-dimensional images to give a sense of both panorama and depth. It was the French post-impressionist Paul Cizanne's painting Dans le Parc du Chateau (National Gallery of London collection) which provided Nolan with the solution. Nolan commented that "I noticed that Cizanne had very broken shapes that he cut through with the trunks of trees. The stereoscopic effect comes partially from the sudden placement of the straight edge against the mottled and divided background." (E. Lynn, Sidney Nolan - Australia, Sydney, 1979, p.130)
While Ned Kelly and other images in the series would provide Nolan with practical solutions to the problems of painting these stereoscopic scenes, it is the protean, ashen figure of Kelly in the foreground that demands attention. "It is a wan, reduced Kelly, a pale rider on death's pale horse, a pallid shadow of his once rumbustious and defiantly embattled self. His helmet, worn like a badge of battles long ago casts no aura, is more an identification tag than a symbol; he himself is more victim than vainglorious victor." (E. Lynn, Sidney Nolan, London, 1967, p.48)
The naked, pale Kelly on his horse is far removed from the triumphal, brightly coloured images of the 1940s works. The air of menace created by the armed policemen, and the precipitous slope of the hillside, shrink the Ned Kelly in these later images both literally and metaphorically, from his pre-eminent position in Nolan's 1946 work of the same title, Ned Kelly (National Gallery of Australia collection).