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Lot 156

Sidney Nolan
(1917-1992)
Antarctica, 1964

26 June 2019, 19:00 AEST
Sydney, Woollahra

Sold for AU$107,360 inc. premium

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Sidney Nolan (1917-1992)

Antarctica, 1964
signed and dated lower right: '12 Sept 1964 / Nolan'; signed, dated and inscribed verso: 'Australian / Galleries / MELBOURNE / Nolan / 1964 / Antarctica'
oil on composition board
122.0 x 122.0cm (48 1/16 x 48 1/16in).

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Sir Sidney Nolan, United Kingdom, until 1992
Lady Nolan, United Kingdom, until 2016
The Estate of Lady Nolan, United Kingdom


Alan Moorehead, the distinguished Australian author whose book on Gallipoli had been one of the inspirations for Nolan's series on that subject in the 1950s was also behind the voyage to Antarctica in 1964. He planned to write about the heroic age of explorers and Nolan, who accompanied him, was to paint the subject. The book was not written but Moorehead's introduction to Nolan's London and New York exhibition catalogues evoked in words the landscape that Nolan depicted in paint: 'as you gaze upwards, you see a tremendous mirage forming. It creates a second range of mountains on top of the first, and this false range is impossibly, unbelievably high, and often its outlines are clearer than the real range that lies below.'

Nolan was seldom influenced by a single source and in the present work appears to draw on the work of J.M.W. Turner, the master of the Romantic sublime, whose tumultuous, swirling seascapes captured both the awe and potential danger of their environment.

For other important works from this series see lots 113, 125, and 193.

Additional information

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