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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Barry & Anne Pang Collection
• Sale Date:
  18 Oct 2015 ~ 2.30pm
• Lot #:
  43
• Lot Description:
  § Sidney Robert Nolan
  (1917-1992)
  Kelly 1960
  synthetic polymer paint and polyvinyl acetate on board
  120.5 x 89.5 cm
  initialled lower left: n ; titled, dated, signed and inscribed verso: KELLY 1960 nolan NOT FOR SALE Mathiessens Gallery 142 New Bond St
• Provenance:
  Matthiesen Gallery, London; Geoff K Gray, Sydney, 27 November 1974, lot 78; Andrew Ivanyi Gallery, Melbourne; Barbara Tucker, Melbourne; Private Collection, Melbourne
• Exhibited:
  Possibly Nolan, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom,; 24 March - 6 May 1961 and touring to Sheffield, Leeds, Hull, Bristol, Liverpool, Edinburgh, and Wakefield, United Kingdom, 13 May - 28 November 1961; Unmasked Sidney Nolan and Ned Kelly 1950-1990, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 11 November 2006 - 4 March 2007, illus. in cat. p12.
• Notes:
  Kelly 1960 belongs to a small group of paintings by Sidney Nolan painted in New York between 1959 and 1960. The Nolan scholar Damian Smith has identified six of these which all re-visit the artist's enduring subject, the legendary Australian bushranger Ned Kelly.1 Nolan initially painted his interpretation of the Kelly saga in the celebrated series from 1945 to 1947. Following his first visit to Europe in the 1950s, he encountered the visible scars of the Second World War which led to a second series full of pathos and tragedy set within a parched and hostile landscape. More Kellys appeared sporadically over the next years, most potently in the set of four painted in response to the Hungarian uprising of 1956. So powerful was this set that three now reside in the collections of the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, the Arts Council, London, and the Tate Gallery. Following an extended stay on the Greek island of Hydra and an epic road trip across the United States, Nolan developed a method of painting mixing polymer paint with the experimental medium of polyvinyl acetate. Applied with squeegees and brush, it allowed for a translucency and fluidity which gives the appearance of a subject flowing in and out of the paint. This had been partially inspired by Nolan seeing his step-daughter Jinx swimming underwater in the Grand Canyon and was initially utilised in paintings exhibited as part of his Retrospective held at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 1957. He then undertook extended explorations of the Gallipoli theme and the mythological tale of Leda and the Swan using the same methods, dipping in and out of the Kelly saga as he went. One of the great benefits of the squeegee and brush technique was his ability to rapidly build up layers, as he described in a letter to his colleague Albert Tucker: ÔUndercoat seems to play a great part in my life. I always feel I have already done the painting with all the brushwork.'2 In February 1960, Nolan was again on the road travelling to an exhibition of his work at Phoenix, Arizona, commenting in another letter to Tucker that he was Ô(n)ow in the middle of a desert É The landscape & the light is quite like Central Australia and mops up my nostalgia.'3 Kelly 1960 bears the evidence of this nostalgia with the spare presence of the bushranger haunting a battered landscape constructed from a palette of burnt sienna, umber and blue. The agitated brushwork animates the surface enhancing the sensation that Kelly is Ôalone, a man of sorrows, vanquished and defiant. É the epitome of the hero as survivor.'4 In response to such works, one international critic declared Nolan to be Ôa rare bird. He is original. He is not a pleasant painter. He seems to be re-inventing everything - technique, mythology, everything - and realises feelings for which traditional ways of painting offer no avenue for expressions.'5 Nolan re-visited the subject many times in his subsequent career but he rarely captured the anxious intensity evident in Kelly 1960. 1 For details of these six Kelly paintings, see: Damian Smith, ÔNolan through Kelly', Unmasked: Sidney Nolan & Ned Kelly, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2006, p.27 fn.14 2 Sidney Nolan, letter to Albert Tucker, 10 May 1960, reproduced in: Patrick McCaughey (ed.), Bert and Ned: the correspondence of Albert Tucker and Sidney Nolan, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2006, p.210 3 Sidney Nolan, letter to Albert Tucker, 8 February 1960, reproduced in: Patrick McCaughey (ed.), op cit., p.208 4 Patrick McCaughey, Strange Country: why Australian painting matters, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2014, p.171 5 I.C., ÔReview', Artnews, New York, November 1958, p.14 § Indicates that Resale Royalty of 5% will be applied to the hammer price of this work.
• Estimate:
  A$380,000 - 450,000
• 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.