Sidney Nolan: Desert and Drought
Outback and beyond

Although the Nolans left Australia for Europe in 1953, with the intention of remaining for an initial period of three years, they never returned to live there permanently. Living abroad, Nolan repeatedly returned to the themes of Burke and Wills and the Australian desert and drought, all of which continued to influence the way in which his contemporaries and subsequent generations have viewed, interpreted and valued the Australian outback.

Nolan’s unique images of aspects of Australian experience, produced in Australia between 1949 and 1953, represent glorious achievements in the realms of landscape, history, and religious painting. As a studio painter Nolan brought a detachment and compassion that transformed his paintings from being merely exercises in plein-airism into something more permanent.

Nolan’s visionary responses to the Australian landscape continue to substantially shape contemporary consciousness. Nolan’s significance lies not in the fact that his images are uniquely Australian, but rather the manner in which his art transformed the Australian experience into something more universal. Nolan merged the past with the present, the real with the imagined, Australia with Europe, but, above all, Nolan painted with intelligence, intensity and compassion.

Sidney NOLAN
(1917–92)
Ram caught in flood 1955
oil and enamel paint on composition board
106.3 x 89.2 cm
The Jinx Nolan Collection
© Courtesy of Mary Nolan