born Australia 1917, arrived in Great Britain 1953, died 1992

His long immersion in radical modernism, prolific with magnificent trivialities, has paid dividends in the development of an individual perception of a very high order and in the steady growth of a rare lyrical talent, maturing in his Nhill and Dimboola landscapes. Here... we glimpse for the first time since Roberts, McCubbin and the early Streeton, the return of an authentic national vision on a higher and more independent level.

Albert Tucker, Angry Penguins, no. 5, 1943.

Historical Context
In 1943 John Curtin and the Australian Labor Party were re-elected to govern Australia and Robert Menzies, who was later to become the country's longest serving Liberal Prime Minister, was elected leader of the United Australia Party.

The second world war was still in progress and had a major effect on the everyday lives of people. Beef rationing was introduced in stores and restaurants to assist in feeding the armed forces, and Australian Spitfire pilots successfully defended Darwin against Japanese attack. In Melbourne women in a large munitions factory went on strike demanding 90% of the male wage, and striking waterside workers in Sydney were made liable for army enlistment.

1943 was also the year in which penicillin was used successfully for the first time which was to be a significant aid to the allied war effort.

That same year Nolan was stationed in the Wimmera, having been conscripted into the army in 1942.

Background
The year 1938 was significant for Nolan because he decided to become a full-time artist although he had not been impressed with his art training at Prahran Technical College and the National Gallery School, Melbourne. In the same year he met John and Sunday Reed, who supported and encouraged young and contemporary artists in Melbourne. Nolan became a foundation member of the Contemporary Art Society, which was instigated by John Reed in opposition to the conservative Australian Academy of Art.

Between 1942 and 1944 Nolan was conscripted into the army and was stationed in the Wimmera in western Victoria. It was Sunday Reed who suggested he consider 'what the chances were of re-doing Australian landscape' (Richard Haese in Sidney Nolan: The City and the Plain, p. 12.) Nolan's Wimmera paintings show his attempts to reinterpret the landscape.

Influence
Nolan rejected the academic traditions of his short art training. He was influenced by the concepts expressed in the extensive reading he undertook, especially the radical restructuring of poetry undertaken by the poets Rimbaud and Rilke. Mainly through reproductions he discovered the modernism of such artists as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and the 'primitive' art of Henri Rousseau. Locally the arrival of the Russian artist Danila Vassilieff, with his simple and direct art, was significant for Nolan.

Technique and Materials
Nolan was a fast and prolific painter, a painting may be executed in a single session, although its conception is usually a matter of weeks. In the Wimmera he did sketches on the spot, but these were explorations rather than preparatory sketches for his later paintings. Nolan's Wimmera paintings were all studio works, painted from memory and without preliminary drawing. He worked on a number of themes simultaneously, including landscapes, portraits and childhood memories of St Kilda. He placed his canvas or board on a flat surface and worked with Ripolin, a fast-drying and extremely fluid enamel house-paint.

The Painting
Wimmera (from Mt Arapiles) shows Nolan 're-doing' and reinterpreting the traditional theme of landscape in Australian art.

The high view-point emphasizes the flatness of the vast wheatlands and natural scrublands below. The plain pushes vertically up the painting to confront us, and refuses to sink back in perspective towards the abrupt horizon and narrow strip of blue sky. The painting is split diagonally into two regions: the Little Desert with its red-tinged earth and reflective blue salt lakes, and the country town. The geometric patterning of wheatfields is discernible between the desert and the town. The town is arranged in a cubist overlapping manner and, like so many country towns, its buildings stretch along its main street. It is dominated by the massive wheat silos, which give the town its reason for existence, showing man's confidence in production.

The desert contrasts with the order (if somewhat chaotic) of the town. The salt lakes are irregular and the trees exist randomly on the surface of the plain as they cast appropriate shadows or reflect on the still waters of the lakes.

Nolan thus, in an almost simplistic but well-devised style, captures the marginal flat lands of Australia in an honest, direct and objective manner.