Sidney Nolan

Nolan painted some 75 versions of Leda and the Swan. Curator Barry Pearce offers some insights into the artist’s motivations for painting the series.

In Kelly and armour we finally see Kelly freed from his armour. Here, curator Barry Pearce finds some parallels between Nolan’s preoccupation with Ned Kelly and the poet Arthur Rimbaud.

African landscape, Rimbaud at Harar, Baboon, and Head of Rimbaud take us back to the awakening of Nolan’s inner eye during his youth, and forward to his last landscapes.

Sidney Nolan recounts the experiences that led him to create this series while Curator Barry Pearce argues why Riverbend may be seen as Nolan’s greatest masterpiece.

The Army slouch hat and the blue eyes give the game away: this portrait of Ern Malley is Nolan confronting his demons – or perhaps his critics.

Little Dog Mine brought with it more than a little bit of luck for Sidney Nolan as its sale introduced his work to the world stage.

Temptations of various saints have been a juicy subject for artists from the Middle Ages onwards but in Nolan’s painting, there is a suggestion that Saint Anthony’s will shall prevail.

Queensland was in the grip of a horrendous drought. Even so, Nolan drew inspiration from the trip, as Curator Barry Pearce recounts.

Nolan’s second Kelly series shows a more intimate image of Kelly in which the mask has partially broken away to reveal a Christ-like expression of calm.

In 1946, Nolan was driving his father through Northern Victoria, when they saw a hare struggling in a trap, the inspiration for this painting that could be seen as a self-portrait.

Curator Barry Pearce discusses the Kelly Series paintings which Nolan has said “are secretly about myself ... it’s an inner history of my own emotions”.

Nolan’s painting Mrs Fraser, where treachery has reduced the woman to a beast, can be viewed as a metaphor for events in Nolan’s own life, as Curator Barry Pearce explains.

In his paintings about these ill-fated heroes, Nolan reaffirmed the possibility of history painting at a time when rampant modernism had virtually stamped it out.

Curator Barry Pearce and Sidney Nolan discuss Nolan’s initial lack of interest in the Australian landscape as a subject for painting and the circumstances that led him to change his view.

The May 1944 edition of Angry Penguins trumpeted the discovery of a major Australian poetic talent – Ern Malley. Nolan painted the cover illustration, Arabian Tree, from one of the lines, and reflects here on his involvement.

Anyone who has experienced that creaking, nearer-my-god-to-thee roller coaster at Luna Park, St Kilda, will identify with this colourful, rickety painting by Sidney Nolan.

The Ern Malley hoax threw some of his modernist friends off balance, but Nolan’s self portrait expressed his reaction to controversy. When attacked with words, Nolan fought back with paint.

In 1939, Sidney Nolan showed his abstract Head of Rimbaud, executed with an inventive mixture of oil and Kiwi boot polish, and secured a commission as the designer for the ballet Icare.

Curator Barry Pearce explains why Nolan’s Boy with the Moon, painted in 1940, was a controversial painting for the time and contained the seeds for Nolan’s future work.

Barry Pearce, Head Curator of Australian Art from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, introduces the Sidney Nolan exhibition.