Sidney Nolan

Bio

Sir Sidney Nolan (1917–1992) was one of the leading Australian artists of the 20th century, best known for his interpretations of Australian historical figures including the explorers Burke and Wills, Eliza Fraser and the bushranger Ned Kelly. His Kelly saga features highly stylised depictions of the bushranger and the Australian landscape and serves not just as a historical account, but also as a catalyst to explore themes of love, myth, and identity.

Although Nolan studied at the National Gallery of Victoria’s School of Art in the 1930s, he was essentially self-taught and was well known as a voracious reader. From 1938 he was supported by art patrons John and Sunday Reed. Their house, ‘Heide’, in the outer Melbourne suburb of Heidelberg (now Heide Museum of Modern Art), was a meeting place for Melbourne's avant-garde, and where he first began his affair with Sunday Reed. In 1951 Nolan moved to London and remained living in England until his death in 1992 at the age of 75.

"Although Nolan’s primary relationships were all with women, in 1947 Nolan referred to himself as ‘ambidextrous’ (his word for bisexual) to poet and editor Barrett Reid. Not long after meeting Reid, Nolan depicted himself in a portrait as Arthur Rimbaud, the 19th-century French poet and lover of poet Paul Verlaine. By this time, Nolan’s ménage à trois with the Reeds had run its course." - Art Gallery of New South Wales

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