Ned Kelly Australian Ironoutlaw | Ironoutlaw.com sidney nolan > maree coote > art gallery > more artists > sculpture > skin and ink Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly Exhibition was held at the Museum of Modern Art, Heide Gallery in 1997. Below are examples of his valuable visual insight to the Ned Kelly legend. An extract by John Reed, written for the introduction to the catalogue of The Kelly Paintings of Sidney Nolan 1946-47 held at Velasquez Gallery, April 1948 gives some insight into the artist and his work: For those of us who rank Sidney Nolan as one of the two or three painters in Australia of real significance, this Exhibition - his first one-man show in a Public Gallery - is of quite outstanding importance. We believe its value in the history of Australian painting is already assured. Australia has not been an easy country to paint. A number of artists have sensed something of what it holds and one or two - the early Roberts and Streeton - have succeeded in giving us glimpses of it which were movingly true; but we have waited many years for a mature statement to cover both the landscape and man in relation to the landscape.

In my opinion this has now been achieved by Sidney Nolan in the group of 27 paintings exhibited, and it is a remarkable achievement indeed, necessitating as it has the most sensitive and profound harmony between symbol, legend and visual impact. That this has been accomplished in language of the utmost simplicity is in itself an indication of the strength of the artist's vision and discipline, while at the same time it should allow those who are responsive to the elemental things which move us all to find ready response in themselves to what the paintings have to give. Sidney Nolan was born in 1917 in Carlton, Victoria. In the mid 1930s Nolan studied at the National Gallery of Victoria after hours while working in the art department of a hat factory. His first patrons were John and Sunday Reed from Heide Gallery and he exhibited with the Contemporary Art Society from 1939-1947. His career was interrupted by his war service, however he did manage to produce a series at Dimboola. In 1945 he began his best known series of works based on Ned Kelly and the bushranger legend, which were exhibited in Paris in 1948.

In 1951, Nolan held his first exhibition at the Redfern Gallery starting his international success. Other well known works include his Leda and Swan, African and Gallipoli series. For the next thirty years Nolan travelled and exhibited extensively, while also producing designs for ballets and plays, book covers and illustrations. He donated many works throughout his later years, including the Kelly paintings to the National Gallery of Australia. In 1985, he acquired the property adjoining Arthur Boyd's on the Shoalhaven River. He was awarded many prizes and awards including a knighthood in 1981, and was honoured with a Retrospective in 1986. He is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, all state galleries, many regional and university galleries, the Tate Gallery, London, Museum of Modern Art, New York and numerous private and corporate collections, both nationally and internationally. The Trial TALKING SENSE While not everyone wants to read about Ned Kelly or the ANZACs or even The Great Depression, we hope they want to learn something about Australian History.

From the ex-Prime Minister John Howard to a confused ex-NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt (see the ex-pattern here?) a number of politicians have jumped on the teaching history bandwagon. But at what cost? From Right Wing Liberals to the multitude of State Governments, seems everyone has an agenda. We'd like to let the readers decide what is worth learning. Here at IronOutlaw.com we present the facts, the fiction and everything in between. It all adds to the experience and hopefully makes History an exciting place to be while also proving it needn't always have to be written by the victors. [ site map ] SHOPPING If you're looking for that perfect gift then head over to our shop where we are featuring Max Brown's 312 page hardcover limited edition novel Australian Son: the story of Ned Kelly for $34.95 with free Australia wide postage (or $14.95 international postage). All of Max's books come with a bonus Australian Son bookmark. These books are only available for purchase online (and not through book shops). Of course the money we raise goes back in to building the world's greatest Ned Kelly web site.

Sidney Nolan | About | Sidney Nolan Trust Sidney Nolan Trust Tweet Sidney Nolan OM AC KB RA Of Irish origin, Sidney Nolan was born in Melbourne, Australia on 22nd April 1917. During his lifetime he became recognised as one of the foremost international modern artists. In his youth during the 1940s, Sidney painted his famous series of paintings inspired by the life of the outlaw Ned Kelly. At this time he was one of a group of painters in Australia who became known as the Angry Penguins. Before setting out for England, he travelled throughout Australia working on several remarkable sequences of paintings, the most notable of which depicts the landscape of the interior. Sidney arrived in London in 1951. He began to travel extensively in Europe and in 1956 he moved to Greece where he spent a year painting themes derived from Greek Mythology. He also spent time at Studio 17 in Paris studying engraving and lithography with S.W.Hayter. Nolan was awarded a Harkness Fellowship in 1958 to study in the United States. During the two years he spent there, he formed a close friendship with the American poet Robert Lowell and illustrated several books for him.

In England, Sidney became a regular visitor to the Aldeburgh Festival (then in its formative years) and developed a strong relationship with Benjamin Britten, exhibiting paintings inspired by Britten’s works in the festival exhibitions. In 1973, Faber Music Limited published a fine limited facsimile edition of the original score of Britten’s music for Berthold Brecht’s “Children’s Crusade” illustrated by Sidney Nolan. Sidney’s desire to see the world was insatiable and took him beyond Europe to Africa, China and Antartica. He painted many remarkable series of works inspired by these vast continents. However, Sidney’s affection for Australia and sense of his Australian nationality was strong, and he was drawn to return for a least a few months of every year. Major retrospective exhibitions of Sidney Nolan’s work have been held in Sydney in 1967, in Melbourne in both 1987 and 1992, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1957 and in Dublin at the Royal Dublin Society in 1973.

Important exhibitions of his early work have been held at Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1962 and later in 1994 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Sidney’s work is widely represented in the state galleries of Australia, the regional art galleries in the U.K. as well as the Tate Gallery in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Pittsburgh Museum of Art and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Exhibitions relating to particular aspects of Sidney’s work or specific series of his paintings have been seen throughout Australia and the United Kingdom and in many major cities in Europe and the United States. The Australian Government honoured Sidney with a gallery in Canberra which bears his name and to which he donated paintings that are displayed as a permanent exhibition. During the summer of 1983 when Sidney settled on the borders of Wales, he expressed the sense of belonging once again to a landscape of great magnitude quoting a line he had written in his youth, “All was static and monumental with the first of the dawn”. At sixty he felt compelled to devote himself again to the ideas that had preoccupied him as a young man, and in his studio at the Rodd he worked on paintings relating to those abstract themes.

For Sidney these paintings were a particularly important aspect of his life’s work. Sidney Nolan was knighted in 1981 and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1983. He was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a member of The Royal Academy of Arts. He died in London on 28th November 1992. Follow Us Australia's modernist painters – Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester – Melbourne 1940s– | australia.gov.au Australia's modernist painters – Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester – Melbourne 1940s– Brett Whiteley Australia's modernist painters – Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester – Melbourne 1940s– Albert Tucker, Arthur Boyd and Sidney Nolan, Hurstbridge, c. 1968, photographer Barbara Tucker, gelatin silver. © Barbara Tucker. Image courtesy of Barbara Tucker and the National Library Australia.

Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester are considered to be the major figures of a modernist movement in Australian art, based in Melbourne, which has determined and shaped Australian contemporary art. They were known as the Angry Penguins painters, and were part of the broader Angry Penguins movement that also included Max Harris and John Perceval, among others. The aim of the group was to modernise Australian creative arts and poetry, and challenge traditions they saw as restrictive in Australia in the 1940s. Contemporary movements in Europe, such as surrealism and French symbolism influenced the Angry Penguins. These movements were seen as vital by the Angry Penguin painters to modernise the contemporary Australian art scene and also to inspire Australian artists in finding different and more relevant modes of expression. Consequently, the Angry Penguins adopted a spontaneous and visionary approach to their creative process. Nolan, for example, was a fast and prolific painter, working without preliminary sketches, often painting from memory. The symbolic surrealism in the works by Nolan, Boyd, Hester and Tucker added a new and exciting dimension to a somewhat stagnant Australian art scene.

They shared a meeting place with other artists and writers at the home of the wealthy art patrons, John and Sunday Reed, Heide, just outside Melbourne, now Heide Museum of Modern Art. Arthur Boyd Nude with beast III, 1962, Arthur Boyd, oil on composition board. Felton Bequest, 1966. Reproduced with the permission of Bundanon Trust. Arthur Boyd (1920–1999) is recognised as a master painter, potter and graphic artist, nationally and internationally. Born in Melbourne, Arthur Boyd was a member of one of the most remarkable artistic dynasties of Australian art history – son of the potter, sculptor and painter, Merric Boyd and painter Doris Gough, and brother of David and Guy. Boyd was conscripted into the Australian Army during World War II where he met John Perceval. Perceval later married Boyd’s sister Mary. In 1944 Arthur Boyd, Guy Boyd and Peter Herbst established a pottery workshop at Murrumbeena and turned their energy to ceramic work, creating a series of angel figures, before returning to painting from 1955.

Boyd lived in England from 1959 to 1968 and then returned to Australia. In 1972, he bought the property, Bundanon, on the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales. His spirited imagination infused both the physical and spiritual landscape of Australia with beautiful and haunting insight. With the purchase ...[of Bundanon] ...came one of the most sustained forms of inspiration to Arthur Boyd's work. It was here that Arthur Boyd painted some of his most enduring studies of the Shoalhaven River and the Australian bush. Eva Breuer He gave Bundanon to the Australian people in March 1993 as a refuge for artists and musicians. Arthur Boyd was Australian of the Year in 1995. An education centre was opened at Bundanon in 1999 and it is still run by the Bundanon Trust for artists and arts education. Sidney Nolan Kelly and horse, 1946, Sidney Nolan, enamel on composition board. Image courtesy of the Nolan Gallery.

As an artist, Sidney Nolan (1917–1992) is best known for his depictions of the Australian outback, and for his historical paintings 'well known for dramatic shifts between dark, moody themes and bright uplifting creations' (Eva Breuer). In 1946 he began a series of paintings on the theme of the bushranger Ned Kelly and other historical figures such as Eliza Fraser and Burke and Wills. Nolan is attributed with giving the Australian stories of exploration and other 'legends of failure', including Gallipoli, a timeless and definitive quality. Nolan was born in Melbourne and studied intermittently at art school. During the Second World War he was conscripted and served at Dimboola in the Wimmera District of Victoria from 1942–45. Sidney Nolan rejected the academic traditions of his short art training. Instead, his main influence was the radical poetry by the poets Rimbaud and Rilke. This love of literature is seen as visually evident in Nolan's work. Other key influences were modernist artists such as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Henri Rousseau.

Locally the arrival of the Russian artist Danila Vassilieff in Melbourne, with his simple and direct art, was significant for Nolan. His long immersion in radical modernism ..., 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. Nolan spent his final years in London where, in addition to painting, he illustrated books and designed sets for the ballet and opera. Sidney Nolan is held by many to be Australia's most internationally famous artist and is referred to as one of the major Western artists of the twentieth century. Much of his work is on display in the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1974, Nolan donated 24 of his works to the Australian public, held as the Nolan Gallery's Foundation Collection at the Canberra Museum and Gallery. Albert Tucker Victory Girls, 1943, Albert Tucker, oil on cardboard.

Image courtesy of Barbara Tucker and the Australian National Gallery. Albert Tucker (1914–1999) is considered to be a key figure in modern Australian art although many people find his works unsettling. Tucker depicted the darker side of life – showing fear, trauma, anxiety and struggle in his paintings. He often worked with paints he had made himself, always experimenting with paints and ideas – including those of the surrealist artists. Unable to afford to attend art school, Tucker was largely self-taught as well as learning from other artists including the Angry Penguins. In the late 1930s, his works were seen by Sunday and John Reed and he began his involvement with the painters Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd at the Reed's Heide homestead. This group included fellow artist Joy Hester, who became his wife. Tucker came to the notice of Melbourne art critics in the 1940s. During the Second World War, Tucker worked sketching wounds for a medical team. On his return to Melbourne, he painted a series of works depicting a city without any moral conscience. After separating from Hester, Tucker spent time in England and Europe, from 1947 till 1958.

This stay gave rise to a fresh new series of 'monstrous prostitutes and troubled religious paintings'. After arriving in New York in 1958 the subject of his works changed from city to outback. In contrast to the works of Sidney Nolan and Russel Drysdale, which Tucker rejected as nationalistic landscape paintings, Tucker depicted the outback as completely inhospitable. The work Burke and Wills from this series was the second of his works to be included in the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. In 1960, Tucker received the Kurt Geiger Award from the Museum of Modern Art, Australia, that payed for him to return to Australia for a retrospective of his work. Joy Hester Woman with Harmonica, c 1941, Joy Hester, brush, ink and pencil on paper. Joy Hester. Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia, 2007. Joy Hester (1920–1960) was part of the group of painters who joined the Contemporary Art Society in Melbourne during the late 1930s. There she met and married the artist Albert Tucker and soon left art school.

Mixing with artists such as Albert Tucker, Danilla Vasillieff and Noel Counihan, Joy learned to paint in a way she would never learn at school. Sunday Reed, the art patron, became Joy's closest friend. At the age of 27 she was diagnosed with Hodgkins disease and subsequently left Tucker, and embarked on a relationship with the artist Gray Smith. During her lifetime, Hester had only three exhibitions and sold very little. Joy Hester's work is celebrated today for its freedom of expression and its ability to translate emotions into pictures....Hester's practice is vigorous in style, often exploring her subconscious mind.... These depictions of inner conflict are raw and often filled with a quiet sorrow. Michael Reid, August 2005. Joy Hester's work is displayed in galleries throughout Australia. In her book Leave no Space for Yearning, Kelly Gellatly describes Hester as a modernist, one of the few who defined the arts scene in the 1940s. Useful links Ned Kelly | australia.gov.au Australia.gov.au Helping you find government information and services Search form Women in colonial times Ned Kelly Unknown, Portrait of the bushranger Ned Kelly, 1880, glass plate negative.

Image courtesy of Melbourne University Archives: 88 137. The bushranger Ned Kelly is one of Australia's greatest folk heroes. He has been memorialised by painters, writers, musicians and filmmakers alike. More books, songs and websites have been written about Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang than any other group of Australian historical figures. Bushranging was said to have ended with the shooting of the Kelly Gang in 1880 at Glenrowan, Victoria, made possible by the introduction of the Felons Apprehension Act 1865 (NSW) which allowed outlawed bushrangers to be shot, rather than arrested and sent to trial. Irish rebels and wild colonial boys Before the end of transportation in 1840, more than 50,000 Irish 'rebels' were exiled to Australia. Their mistrust of British authority came with them, along with their vehement independence as Catholics, specifically excluded from holding public office or government positions until after 1900. It has been argued that this independence of the Irish contributed to the showdown with Ned Kelly and the police at Glenrowan in 1880.

Many of the transported convicts were also agitators, machine breakers, political activists and union organisers. These included the Scottish lawyer Thomas Muir, transported in 1794 for handing out copies of Tom Paine's The Rights of Man. Ned Kelly Edward 'Ned' Kelly was born at Beveridge in 1855, the first-born son of an Irish Catholic couple. His father, John 'Red' Kelly was an ex-convict (transported for the theft of two pigs), who eloped with Ellen Quinn, an Irish 'bounty migrant', from Van Dieman's Land (later Tasmania) to Port Phillip. The Kellys settled in the Victorian ranges north of Melbourne, eking out a living on the edge of the squatter's rich lands. Red Kelly supplemented his income by horse stealing. After his arrest and gaoling for horse-stealing, Red Kelly died before finishing his sentence. Ellen moved the family to a slabhut at Eleven Mile Creek in the north-west of the colony where Ned became the main breadwinner, taking jobs as a timber cutter and rural worker - ringbarking, breaking in horses, mustering cattle and fencing.

Unknown, Kate Kelly, sister of Ned Kelly, 1880s, B&W postcard. Image courtesy of State LIbrary of Victoria: H23557. Ned Kelly grew up with the tales of bushrangers and knew the tale of Ben Hall well. At the age of 14, Ned was arrested for stealing 10 shillings from a Chinese man and reportedly to have announced that he 'was going to be a bushranger'. Ned was sent as a kind of apprentice bush worker to Harry Power, one of the last of the convicts transported to Van Dieman's Land in 1842 for stealing a pair of shoes, who took to bushranging after escaping from Pentridge Gaol. A year later, Kelly was charged with robbery under arms on one occasion when he was holding Power's horse. He was freed for lack of evidence, although a few months later has was back in the lockup for assault. During this time, Ned also gained some notoriety as the 'champion' boxer in the Beechworth district.

The shooting of Constable Fitzpatrick Ned's real troubles with the police began when his mother, Ellen Kelly, was arrested for aiding and abetting in the attempted murder of Constable Arthur Fitzpatrick on the 15th of April. Fitzpatrick visited the Kelly home to serve warrants to arrest Dan Kelly for alleged horse stealing. As a result of the subsequent brawl, Ned and Dan fled to the bush where they were joined by Joe Byrne and Steve Hart. They became the Kelly gang. Fitzpatrick returned to the police station with a different story which involved being hit on the head with a shovel, an ambush by Kelly sympathisers and being shot at three times by Ned Kelly. Constable Fitzpatrick, was later dismissed from the police force as 'a liar and a larrikin'. Fitzpatrick was in charge of the Greta Police Station for a few days and had been warned to stay away from the Kellys - a warning he ignored, boasting in several hotels that he would 'fix the Greta mob'. In 1878, Judge Redmond Barry sentenced Ellen Kelly, to three years hard labour for assaulting a police officer, even though the officer's testimony was dubious.

While Ned Kelly did not try to break into Beechworth gaol to rescue his mother as planned, he offered an ultimatum to the government of the day: ...to give those people who are suffering innocence, justice and liberty. if not I will be compelled to show some colonial stratagems which will open the eyes of not only the Victoria Police and inhabitants but also the whole British Army... (Jerilderie Letter, p. 19) Samuel Calvert (1828 - 1913), A search party in the Wombat Ranges, 1879, print: engraving. Image courtesy of State Library of Victoria: IAN21/02/79/21. Hiding out in the Wombat Ranges Ned was so enraged that he made a hide-out, with his brother Dan and their mates Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, at the head of the King River, a virtually impenetrable place where Harry Power had long eluded escape (before he had been eventually caught with the help of an informant and black trackers). Ned Kelly used this hide-out to his advantage, aided by sympathetic 'informers', to confirm who made their way into the Wombat Ranges.

Ned was furious about the use of the Felons Apprehension Act and the use of black trackers brought in from Queensland. The Gang relied upon their network of friends, 'and in this manner they could find retreats, over hundreds of miles of impenetrable mountains amongst which they had been brought up all their lives, and where they knew every road, gully and hiding place.' (Superintendent Francis Hare) Unknown, The bush ranging tragedy: scenes and incidents picture, 1878, print: wood engraving. Image courtesy of State Library of Victoria: A/S21/12/78/149. Stringybark Creek The police were determined to hunt down the Kelly Gang, and in October 1878 a party of four police with heavy arsenal were sent out from Mansfield. Their camp at Stringybark Creek received a surprise visit from the Kellys, with Ned commanding 'Bail up! Throw up your arms'. Constable McIntyre surrendered but Constable Lonigan went for his revolver, before being shot dead by Ned Kelly. When the other two police appeared and, Sergeant Kennedy reached for his revolver, he was mortally wounded.

Constable Scanlon was then killed trying to drag his rifle from its holster. Outlaws The government’s reaction to the Stringybark Creek murders was swift and severe. Within ten days of the murders, the Berry Government had enacted the Felons’ Apprehension Act 1878, and called on Ned Kelly and his brother Dan to surrender or be declared outlaws under the Act’s draconian provisions, which authorised any citizen to shoot a declared outlaw on sight. The Victorian Government also committed a major outlay in public funds to the Kelly hunt and, after the Jerilderie raid in February 1879, combined with New South Wales to increase the reward for the gang’s capture to £8000, the fourth increase in the reward in the space of just four months. Shooting of Sherritt Unknown, The Kelly Gang - from an original photograph, Steve Hart, Dan Kelly, Ned Kelly, c 1870, postcard: gelatin silver. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an14034948.

In June 1880, Joe Byrne and Dan Kelly visited Aaron Sherritt, a close friend of Joe Byrne and whom Joe and Ned Kelly had helped fence his property. This, however, had only marked him as a Kelly accomplice and Sherritt had ended up colluding with police. Four policemen were hiding in Sherritt's hut and, after Sherritt was shot by Byrne for betraying Kelly, the police remained hiding, using the women in the hut as hostages. The Kelly's shooting of Sherritt made it look as if the Gang could move about the district as they wished, and the police redoubled their efforts to capture the Gang. The Glenrowan shoot-out After more bank robberies, the Kelly Gang had their 'last stand' in the small town of Glenrowan, Victoria in 1880, where they took 60 hostages in a hotel. The Gang established a base at the Glenrowan Hotel, determined to fight it out with police when they came. Kelly planned to derail the expected train carrying the police, but this was prevented by a school teacher, let out of the hotel, who flagged the train to a halt.

Led by Superintendent Hare and assisted by local Constable Bracken, the troopers attacked the Gang in the hotel. Superintendent Hare and other police officers were wounded when the Gang shot at the police. The townsfolk were allowed to leave the hotel when there was a lull in the fighting. Ned Kelly was shot in the arm and thumb, and retreated to the bush, from where he hoped to attack police from behind. Knowing that the Felons Apprehension Act meant they could be shot, the Kelly Gang all wore suits of steel armour, made during the previous year. Despite this, Joe Byrne was shot in the groin and died. Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were shot dead, and the hotel was burned to the ground by the police. As dawn broke, Ned Kelly, in his armour, approached the police from the rear and began shooting at them with his revolver, despite his wounds. After half an hour, he was shot in both unprotected legs. A wounded Ned was arrested and charged with the murder of a policeman. Ned Kelly was tried and convicted of the murder of Constable Lonigan at Stringybark Creek. Melbourne Gaol In gaol, Kelly wrote a long letter to the authorities demonstrating the discrimination against poor Irish settlers.

Despite public protests, the judgement of Redmond Barry prevailed. Kelly spoke the immortal last words 'Such is life' and was hanged on 11th November 1880 at Melbourne Gaol. A flawed hero Ned Kelly's final defiant stand against the Felons Apprehension Act and his pleas for justice to end discrimination against poor Irish settlers did end up opening the eyes of people. Ned Kelly in his armour came to symbolise a fight by a flawed hero, a convicted criminal, for 'justice and liberty' and 'innocent people'. This captured the imagination of writers, authors and the general public alike. Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang – films Unknown, The actual armour as worn by Ned Kelly (Image is of a motion picture still, probably The Story of the Kelly Gang), 1906, negative. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an24932346. The Australian film industry produced what was probably the world's first full-length feature film in 1906. The film was the Tait Brothers' production The Story of the Kelly Gang .

It was a success in both Australian and British theatres, and it was also the beginning of a genre of bushranger stories. In November 2006 the National Film and Sound Archive released a new digital restoration of The Story of the Kelly Gang. This restoration incorporated 11 minutes of material discovered in the United Kingdom. Prior to this discovery, only a few minutes of footage was available. The Story of the Kelly Gang can be seen when visiting the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. While the Australian public took a liking to bushranger stories, the New South Wales police department did not. The production of films about bushrangers was banned in 1912. The Kelly story, however, outlasted the ban and has been re-filmed a number of times since.

Other well known films about Ned Kelly include: Ned Kelly (1970) starring English rock singer Mick Jagger as Ned; the Trial of Ned Kelly (1977) starring John Waters and Gerard Kennedy; the 1980 mini-series The Last Outlaw starring John Jarratt, Steve Bisley and Sigrid Thornton; and the 2003 Gregor Jordan directed Ned Kelly which starred Heath Ledger. Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang – books and art Sidney Nolan (1917-1992), Kelly and horse, 1946, enamel on composition board. Image courtesy of the Nolan Gallery. The Australian author Peter Carey won the 2001 Booker Prize for his fictional novel True History of the Kelly Gang . Carey's inspiration, in part, came from the Sidney Nolan series of Kelly paintings, some of which can be seen at the Nolan Collection Gallery. The novel's first person narrative style was crafted from Ned's own 'Jerilderie Letter' – an account of the dramatic events leading to him being outlawed in the 1870s. Carey's book is not the first to be written about Ned and the Kelly Gang.

There are many other books including Ned Kelly: A Short Life (1995), Ned Kelly: The Authentic Illustrated History (1984 and reprinted in 2001), I am Ned Kelly (1980) and the Inner History of the Kelly Gang (1929), a very brave move on behalf of the author, J J Kenneally, considering that some of the people being discussed were still alive. Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly series are probably the most well known of the art works about Ned Kelly. Many other artists, including Norman Lindsay, have also produced a variety of art works of this Australian bushranger. Stringybark Creek, where three police officers were shot and killed by Ned Kelly in 1878, and the gang's bush hideaway, both located in the Benalla region of Victoria, have been added to the Victorian Heritage Register. The two camp sites are significant to the cultural history of the state for their association with the nation's most famous bushranger.

Useful links 1000+ images about Sidney Nolan on Pinterest | Africa, Artworks and Billabong Pinterest • The world’s catalog of ideas Sidney Nolan Sidney Nolan, Australian Painter: Biography, Ned Kelly Paintings National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Biography The epitome of Australian modern painting , Sir Sidney Robert Nolan is noted for his landscape painting , depicting the arid scenery of the Australian bush, in a variety of styles. But he is best known, for his naive-style history painting series on the bushranger Ned Kelly, whose instantly recognizable square helmet has become an icon of modern art in Australia. Ned Kelly imagery appears in many of Nolan's landscapes, as do several other figures of Australian folklore, including the explorers Burke and Wills, Mrs Eliza Fraser and the convict Bracefell. An omnivorous reader, influenced by the poet Rimbaud, as well as philosophers like Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer, and with a love of music but little formal training in fine art , Nolan turned to painting at the age of 21, following in the footsteps of abstract painters like Paul Klee and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy .

Not unlike his Melbourne contemporary Russell Drysdale (1912-81), Nolan's mature style borrows heavily from expressionism and (very occasionally) from surrealism . His use of colour , however, is exceptional, from the vivid splashes in the early Ned Kelly series (1946-7) to the saturated brilliancy of his Fremantle pictures (1970-9). His style is also noted for its fluidity, which he emphasized through the use of enamel house paint (ripolin), polyvinyl acetate and acrylic painting . Unlike Drysdale, he painted extremely fast: producing in the end some 35,000 paintings. An inveterate and extensive traveller, he took numerous trips into the outback, and visited most of Europe, America, Africa, Antarctica and China. From 1955, he lived mainly in England, although he worked in Paris and elsewhere. In addition to painting, he explored printmaking and illustration (for Robert Lowell's poetry) as well as theatrical set design .

Knighted in 1981, Nolan's contribution exceeds that of Drysdale, and other 20th century painters such as Sir William Dobell (1899-1970), Noel Counihan (1913-86), Albert Tucker (1914-99), Arthur Boyd (1920-99), John Perceval (1923-2000) and William Robinson (b.1936), but it follows in the great tradition of the 19th century Heidelberg School of Australian Impressionism (c.1885-1900) and its pioneering representatives like Tom Roberts (1856-1931), Frederick McCubbin (1855-1917), Arthur Streeton (1867-1943) and Charles Conder (1868-1909). Burke and Wills Expedition (1948) Sidney Nolan Trust. Early Life Born in Carlton, a suburb of Melbourne, Nolan was the eldest of four children.

Unlike Drysdale, whose father was a gentleman landowner, Nolan's father was a tram driver and sometime illegal bookmaker. Nolan first attended the Brighton Road State School and then Brighton Technical School, before enrolling in the Department of Design and Crafts at the Prahran Technical College. From 1933-8, while taking occasional night classes at the National Gallery of Victoria design school, he worked as a commercial artist and sign-writer, producing advertising and marketing displays, using spray paints and other industrial techniques. As well as absorbing the basics of drawing at night-classes, he also spent long periods in the Public Library reading room studying modern artists like Picasso , and other European expressionist painters . Full-time Painter Nolan started as a full-time painter in 1938, the same year in which he met and married his first wife, Elizabeth. In his drive to learn about visual art and establish himself as a painter, he was greatly encouraged by the solicitor and art patron John Reed (1901-81), and his wife Sunday Reed (1905-81), whose house "Heide" (now the Heide Museum of Modern Art) was a meeting-place for young artists.

Nolan subsequently helped produce the radical quarterly arts journal Angry Penguins, founded by John Reed and the poet Max Harris (1921-96). The periodical provided a useful focus for a number of progressive young painters who were trying to create a form of Australian avant-garde art free from European dominance. As well as Nolan, they included Counihan, Tucker, Boyd, Perceval, Victor O'Connor and Yosl Bergner. He also joined the Contemporary Art Society, of which John Reed was President. Early Paintings Nolan was initially attracted to abstract art - a form he returned to in the last decade of his life - in the manner of Paul Klee (1879-1940). His own minimalist abstract paintings , like Boy and the Moon (1940), consisting of a splash of yellow against a raw blue backdrop, caused some controversy among observers. In addition, using his experience as a commercial artist, he also designed theatrical sets and costumes for Serge Lifar's ballet Icarus, which opened in Sydney, in 1940. In the same year, he held his first solo exhibition at his Melbourne studio.

Nolan was conscripted into the Australian army from 1942 to 1945. During this period, while stationed in the Wimmera area of Victoria, he painted a series of landscapes - depicting the heat and desolate emptiness of the outback - that first signalled his true talent. By then he had largely given up oil painting in favour of ripolin, a fluid and fast-drying type of commercial enamel paint. In July 1944, after hearing that his unit might be sent to Papua New Guinea to fight the Japanese, he went absent without leave, thus becoming a temporary fugitive from the law. This experience quickly proved to be the key to his worldwide success as an artist. Ned Kelly Series After the war, Nolan lived for a period at the Reeds' home, outside Melbourne. It was here that he painted the first of his celebrated Ned Kelly pictures, reportedly with advice from Sunday Reed, with whom he was having an affair.

Examples from the series - all in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra - include: Ned Kelly (1946); Death of Sergeant Kennedy at Stringybark Creek (1946); Death of Constable Scanlon (1946); Constable Fitzpatrick and Kate Kelly (1946); Siege at Glenrowan (1946), and The Trial (1947). Influenced by the uncomplicated naive style of Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) and Nolan's personal identification with the fugitive outlaw, these Kelly paintings also represented Nolan's desire to create the story of a hero and fighter (a metaphor for mankind) who resists tyranny. Despite the inherent ambiguity in the story - after all, Kelly/mankind is destroyed by the tyranny - the series made Nolan's name. He was to re-use Ned Kelly imagery several times during his career, notably in works like Ned Kelly (1955, Private Collection) and the extraordinary Riverbend I (1964-5, Australian National University Art Collection, Canberra).

During the late 1940s, Nolan travelled widely in north-eastern Victoria, Queensland - including Fraser Island, Cairns and Cape York - as well as Central, Far North and Western Australia. Examples of his work from this period, include: Inland Australia (1950, Tate Gallery, London), Burke and Wills Expedition (1948, Sidney Nolan Trust), and The Abandoned Mine (1948, Private Collection), which was noticed at a Sydney exhibition by the British historian Sir Kenneth Clark , who knew instantly that he had stumbled across one of the best landscape artists in Australia. In 1948, Nolan married John Reed's sister, Cynthia, after Sunday's refusal to leave her husband and marry him.

Other Themes Nolan used numerous different themes in his painting, including series like: Gallipoli (1956), Leda and the Swan (1959), America (1958-60), Africa (1961-2), Antarctica (1964), New Guinea series (1965), Fremantle (1970-9), Miners (1972), and his Cezanne pastiches (1978). But his most powerful and recurrent imagery was his depiction of Ned Kelly. His simplified motif of Kelly's square-shaped armoured helmet is now an iconic Australian image. A separate mention should be made in respect of his Fremantle series of paintings, produced in the 1970s. Unmatched for colour by any 20th-century paintings , except perhaps by a handful of Fauvism works, their brilliant colour pigments are nothing short of dazzling. They represent, arguably, Nolan's most creative phase since the 1940s. In 1950, he won the Dunlop Prize, which facilitated his first visit to Britain and Europe.

Following in Drysdale's footsteps, he attracted significant attention in England, where he settled in 1955, although he continued to travel extensively around the globe. He undertook a wide variety of projects involving different types of art , including: engraving and lithography , as well as book illustration (for Robert Lowell's poetry) and theatrical set designs for Stravinsky's opera The Rite of Spring (1962, Royal Opera House, London). In 1963, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for services to art in Britain. In 1981 he was knighted for services to art, and became a member of the Order of Merit in 1983. In 1988 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC). He was also elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts, and a member of the London Royal Academy of Arts.

Collections and Exhibitions Paintings by Sidney Nolan can be seen in many of the best art museums in Australia, including: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of Western Australia , Perth; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane ; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria , Melbourne; Art Gallery of South Australia , Adelaide; the Australian War Memorial, Canberra; Ballarat Fine Art Gallery; Australian National University, Canberra; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; and others. Overseas, he is represented in the Tate Gallery, London; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and several other important public collections. Major retrospectives of Nolan's work have been staged in London's Institute of Contemporary Art (1962), Sydney (1967), Melbourne (1987, 1992), and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (1994). In 2010, his painting First-Class Marksman (1946) became the most expensive Australian painting in history.

The only one of Nolan's first series of 27 Ned Kelly paintings not owned by the National Gallery of Australia, it was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales for a record $5.4 million. See also: Most Expensive Paintings: Top 20 .  For biographies of other modern Australian artists, see: Famous Painters .  For more details of 20th century expressionist painting in Australia, see: Homepage . ENCYCLOPEDIA OF VISUAL ARTISTS Sidney Nolan Biography | Art Reproductions | Reproduktionen von Kunst | Galerie Dada 1917-1992 Nolan, Sidney Biography Australian painter of great versatility whose imagery is often inspired by the folk history of his native Australia. Sidney Nolan was born in Melbourne. With little formal art training, Nolan turned to painting at 21 after varied experiences as a racing cyclist, cook, and gold miner. His early art works show the influences of Paul Klee and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and include the controversial abstract work Boy and the Moon (1940)-a splash of yellow against a raw blue background.

Although his early artworks were highly abstract in form, during the 1940s Sidney Nolan developed a brightly colored, deliberately naive figurative style. He became particularly interested in representing the barren Australian landscape, as in Carron Plains (1948, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia), as well as stories of Australian folk heroes such as the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly. Although figurative painting was unfashionable throughout much of Sidney Nolan's career, his distinctive imagery and simple, expressive style was highly popular. He is undoubtedly the best-known Australian artist of the 20th century. You can buy Sidney Nolan fine art reproduction oil paintings at Galerie Dada. Just click on the 'Back' button.

Question: Born 1917, which Australian painter is well known for his portraits of outlaw Ned Kelly?
Answer: Sidney Nolan