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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Fine Australian & International Art
• Sale Date:
  29 Aug 2016 ~ 6.30pm - Part 1 (Lots 1 - 78)
  30 Aug 2016 ~ 2.30pm - Part 2 (Lots 79 - 328)
• Lot #:
  27
• Lot Description:
  § Sidney Nolan
  (1917-1992)
  Ned Kelly (c.1946)
  ink and wash on paper
  22.7 x 30.4 cm
• Provenance:
  Gift of the artist to Miss June Bellew, Melbourne; Modern British Paintings, Sotheby's, London, 14 March 1979, lot no. 105; Private Collection, London; Important Australian & International Art, Sotheby's Australia, Melbourne, 26 November 2013, lot no. 23; Private collection, Melbourne
• Notes:
  The image of Ned Kelly undisputedly commands the most attention of all Sidney Nolan's extraordinary images in his Prometheum output as an artist. It represents one of the most iconic symbols of Australian identity that is instantly recognised. It was the genius of Nolan to devise a simple square shape that intrudes into the landscape with its solidity while the narrow see-through slit operates as a view-finder focussing our attention on the land beyond. In doing this Nolan made an inanimate object resonate with meaning and power, and the image of Kelly as the outcast hero became a theme that he returned to time and time again, each time injecting it with a fresh vision stemming from a combination of imagination and his own personal experiences. Nolan began painting the image of Ned Kelly in March 1945; however, the first Kelly Series of 1946-47 was started only after he and Max Harris, the poet, critic and publisher, had returned from a tour of Glenrowan and the lower Goulburn Valley where Nolan's grandfather had once tracked the Kelly gang. Although Nolan had read up on the history of the Kelly gang and he and Harris even tracked down Ned's surviving brother who was still alive, the literary aspect was less important to him than the saga being a vehicle to explore more formal concerns in painting. As Nolan stated in 1980, "I'm a much more formal painter and much less anecdotal than is probably realized the black mask was used by me in a formal sense to establish a framework, or a grid, or whatever you like to call it, for doing a system of paintings, a group of paintings that were united by a given formal motif. The fact that there's supposed to be a man underneath the mask, and he's supposed to be Ned Kelly and he's supposed to be a hero or a non-hero, or a criminal, in one sense is secondary to my general pursuit of some formal things that are inside my soul "1 Nolan had thus come up with a way to continuously reinvent both narrative and landscape painting using his own imaginative powers and memory, backed by direct experience and emotion. This combination, plus his relentless drive and creative energy, empowered him to paint some of the most exciting and challenging works of 20th century Australian Art. The ink and wash painting, Ned Kelly (c.1946) thus belongs to this pivotal moment when Nolan's use of Kelly as a visual trope commenced. Frances Lindsay AM 1 Lois Hunter, recorded interview with Sidney Nolan, 29 September 1980, oral history section, National Library of Australia, Canberra; quoted in Barry Pearce, Sidney Nolan, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 2008, p.32 § Indicates that Resale Royalty of 5% will be applied to the hammer price of this work.
• Estimate:
  A$30,000 - 40,000
• 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.