Sidney Nolan is best known for his series of paintings on legends from Australian history, most famously Ned Kelly, the bushranger and outlaw.
46 Facts About Sidney Nolan
2.
Sidney Nolan was born in Carlton, at that time an inner working-class suburb of Melbourne, on 22 April 1917.
3.
Sidney Nolan later moved with his family to the bayside suburb of St Kilda.
4.
Sidney Nolan attended the Brighton Road State School and then Brighton Technical School and left school aged 14.
5.
Sidney Nolan enrolled at the Prahran Technical College, Department of Design and Crafts, in a course which he had already begun part-time by correspondence.
6.
Sidney Nolan was a close friend of the arts patrons John and Sunday Reed, and is regarded as one of the leading figures of the so-called "Heide Circle" that included Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Arthur Boyd and John Perceval.
7.
Sidney Nolan joined the Angry Penguins in the 1940s, after deserting from the army during World War II; indeed he was an editor of the Angry Penguins magazine and painted the cover for the Ern Malley edition published in June 1944.
8.
Sidney Nolan lived for some time at the Reeds' home, "Heide" outside Melbourne.
9.
Sidney Nolan conducted an open affair with Sunday Reed but subsequently married John Reed's sister, Cynthia in 1948 after Sunday refused to leave her husband.
10.
Sidney Nolan had lived in a menage a trois with the Reeds for several years and after his marriage he continued to see them and visited Heide at least once during their lifetimes.
11.
In November 1976, Cynthia Sidney Nolan ended her life by taking an overdose of sleeping pills in a London hotel.
12.
In 1978, Sidney Nolan married Mary nee Boyd, youngest daughter within the Boyd family and previously married to John Perceval.
13.
Sidney Nolan painted a wide range of personal interpretations of historical and legendary figures, including explorers Burke and Wills, and Eliza Fraser.
14.
Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly series follow the main sequence of the Kelly story.
15.
However Sidney Nolan did not intend the series to be an authentic depiction of these events.
16.
Sidney Nolan wanted to create and define episodes in Australian nationalism, to retell the story of a hero.
17.
Nolan recognised that the conceptual image of the black square had been part of modern art since World War I Nolan just placed a pair of eyes into Kelly's helmet which animates its formal shape.
18.
Sidney Nolan's paintings give the audience an insight into the history of Australia but show others from the world how beautiful Australia is.
19.
Sidney Nolan never relied upon one style or technique, but rather experimented throughout his lifetime with many different methods of application, and devised some of his own.
20.
Sidney Nolan was inspired by children's art and modernist painting of the early 20th century.
21.
In terms of art history Sidney Nolan rediscovered the Australian landscape.
22.
Sidney Nolan, like the bushranger, was a fugitive from the law.
23.
In July 1944, facing the possibility that he would be sent to Papua New Guinea on front-line duty, Sidney Nolan went absent without leave.
24.
Sidney Nolan adopted the alias Robin Murray, a name suggested by Sunday Reed, whose affectionate nickname for him was "Robin Redbreast".
25.
Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly series is one of the greatest sequences of Australian paintings of the 20th century.
26.
Sidney Nolan's simplified depiction of Kelly in his armour has become an iconic Australian image.
27.
In 1949, when the series was exhibited at the Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris, the museum's director Jean Cassou called the works "a striking contribution to modern art" and that Sidney Nolan "creates in us a wonder of something new being born".
28.
English critic Robert Melville wrote in 1963 that Sidney Nolan's Kelly belonged to "the company of twentieth-century personages which includes Picasso's minotaur, Chirico's mannequins, Ernst's birdmen, Bacon's popes and Giacometti's walking man".
29.
Paintings of Dimboola landscapes by Sidney Nolan, who was stationed in the area while on army duty in World War II, can be found in the National Gallery of Victoria.
30.
Sidney Nolan travelled in Europe, spending a year in 1956 painting themes based on Greek Mythology while in Greece.
31.
Sidney Nolan became friends with the poet Robert Lowell and produced illustrations for some of his books.
32.
Sidney Nolan was a prolific book cover illustrator, his images enhancing the dust jackets of over 70 publications.
33.
In 1965, Sidney Nolan completed a large mural depicting the 1854 Eureka Stockade, rendered in enamelled jewellery on 1.5 tonnes of heavy gauge copper.
34.
Sidney Nolan employed the "finger-and-thumb" drawing technique of Indigenous Australian sandpainters to create the panoramic scene.
35.
In England, Sidney Nolan attended the Aldeburgh Festival and was encouraged by the organiser and composer Benjamin Britten to show paintings at the festivals.
36.
Sidney Nolan continued to travel widely in Europe, Africa, China, Australia, and even Antarctica.
37.
Sidney Nolan died in London on 28 November 1992 at the age of 75; he was survived by his wife and two children.
38.
Sidney Nolan was buried in the Eastern part of Highgate Cemetery, London.
39.
Sidney Nolan created a series of green-blue gauze panels to evoke the filtered light of the forest.
40.
Sidney Nolan received the Order of Merit in 1983.
41.
The Sidney Nolan Trust, chaired by Lord Lipsey, was established in 1985 to support artists and musicians, and provide exhibition space for works by Nolan and others at The Rodd, north of Kington, Herefordshire.
42.
Sidney Nolan was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1988 having declined being made an Officer in 1975.
43.
Kerr indicated in his letter that he thought Sidney Nolan should have been offered the rank of Companion instead and that he had intended to convey his view to Sir Garfield Barwick, the inaugural Chair of the Order of Australia Council, but that Barwick had already sent Sidney Nolan the letter asking whether Barwick would decline the honour of AO.
44.
Sidney Nolan was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a member of the Royal Academy of Arts.
45.
Melbourne writer Steven Carroll's 2011 novel Spirit of Progress is inspired by Woman and Tent by Sidney Nolan, who based the painting on Carroll's eccentric great-aunt.
46.
Sidney Nolan will be the subject of an upcoming film titled When We Were Modern, directed by Philippe Mora and starring Clayton Watson.