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• Auction House:
  Bonhams Australia
• Sale Name:
  Important Australian Art
• Sale Date:
  29 Nov 2022 ~ 6pm (AEST)
• Lot #:
  56
• Lot Description:
  Sidney Nolan
  (1917-1992)
  Antarctica, 1964
  oil on board
  122.0 x 122.0cm (48 1/16 x 48 1/16in).
  signed, dated and inscribed verso: 'Antarctica / 29 Aug 1964 / nolan'
  RELATED WORKS: Antarctica, 1964, oil on composition board, 121.9 x 121.9cm (NGA 2017.228); Antarctica, 1964, oil on composition board, 121.9 x 121.9cm (NGA 2017.229), and Antarctica, oil on composition board, 121.9 x 121.9cm (NGA 2017.230), all in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2017 from the estate of Lady Nolan; Mt. Erebus, 1964, oil on composition board, 122.0 x 123.0cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, purchased in 2011 from Lady Nolan; Antarctica, 1964, oil on composition board, 122 x 122cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, purchased 2019 from the estate of Lady Nolan; Antarctica, 1964, oil on composition board, 121.00 x 121.0cm, in the collection of the Tate Gallery, London
• Provenance:
  Sir Sidney Nolan, United Kingdom, until 1992; Lady Nolan, United Kingdom, until 2016; The Estate of Lady Nolan, United Kingdom
• References:
  Rodney James, Sidney Nolan: Antarctic Journey, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, 2006, cat. 19, p. 73
• Notes:
  In 1964 Sidney Nolan visited Antarctica as a guest of the United States Navy, fulfilling a childhood passion for the continent and the story of its explorers: Ernest Shackleton, Robert Scott and Douglas Mawson. Nolan had embraced the opportunity after his friend, Alan Moorehead, first suggested the idea at the 1962 Adelaide Festival. Like his other series dealing with mythologised historical characters such as Ned Kelly, Burke and Wills and Leda and Swan, Nolan combined myth and landscape in his Antarctic series to produce a body of work comprising 63 documented paintings. Alan Moorehead, the distinguished Australian author, whose book on Gallipoli had been one of the inspirations for Nolan's series on that subject in the 1950s, was also behind the voyage to Antarctica in 1964. He planned to write about the heroic age of explorers and Nolan, who accompanied him, was to paint the subject. The book was never completed, but Moorehead's written introduction to Nolan's London and New York exhibition catalogues evoked in words the landscape that Nolan depicted in paint: 'as you gaze upwards, you see a tremendous mirage forming. It creates a second range of mountains on top of the first, and this false range is impossibly, unbelievably high, and often its outlines are clearer than the real range that lies below.'
• Estimate:
  A$60,000 - 90,000
• 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.