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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Art Emporium
• Sale Date:
  26 Jul 2015 ~ 2pm
• Lot #:
  34
• Lot Description:
  Sidney Robert Nolan
  (1917-1992)
  Landscape 1960
  ripolin on board
  122 x 122 cm
  signed, titled and dated verso: S.Nolan, LANDSCAPE, 22 May 1960
• Provenance:
  Corporate Collection of the Financial Times 1960; Private Collection, Melbourne
• Exhibited:
  Sidney Nolan: Leda and the Swan and Other Recent Work, Matthiesen Gallery, London, 16 June-16 July 1960, cat. no. 22
• Notes:
  Sidney Nolan's Landscape 1960 was included in the acclaimed solo exhibition Sidney Nolan: Leda and the Swan and Other Recent Work at Mathiessen Gallery, London. The show opened on 9 June 1960 and within three hours of opening 50 of the 75 works had sold. The exhibition attracted the interest of prominent British and Australia collectors, purchasers included Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Sir Kenneth Clark, the Earl of Drogheda (Chairman of both the Financial Times and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden), Agatha Christie, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. It was at this exhibition that the Financial Times purchased Landscape 1960 for the inclusion in their significant corporate art collection. The Matthiesen Gallery exhibition catalogue contained a forward from English Poet Stephen Spender that provided the following insight into Nolan's poetically unique approach to the depiction of place: 'What he seeks to create is a mythology made up of a great many stories, legends and actions, affirmations of human courage and suffering, identical as actions and feelings and truths, without respect to when and where they took place. Across the landscape of a beautiful but strangely dehumanised world, he depicts his chain of heroic legend, which helps us to live.' This sentiment is encapsulated in Nolan's work Landscape 1960, which while devoid of figures, still manages to communicate the immensity and trials of nature in its interaction with man. The English papers of the time were ablaze with praise, with Daily Mirror deeming it the most successful show any Australian had mounted in London. This landmark exhibition paved the way for further success for Australian shows in London throughout the 1960s including Survey of Recent Australian Painting at the Whitechapel Art Gallery at the end of 1960, the 1963 Australian Painting exhibition at the Tate Gallery and Australian Group Exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery in 1967. 1 Stephen Spender, 'Introduction', in Sydney Nolan: Leda and the swan and other recent work (exhibition catalogue), The Mathiesen Gallery, London, 1960 (not paginated)
• Estimate:
  A$40,000 - 60,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.