Sidney Nolan

(1917-1992)

Antarctica, 1964

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Sir Sidney Nolan, United Kingdom, until 1992
Private collection, United Kingdom
Sotheby's, The Estate of Sir Sydney Nolan, Melbourne, 16 September 2001, lot 37
Private collection, Sydney
Bonhams and Goodman, Fine Australian and International Art, Melbourne, 23 April 2007, lot 640
Private collection, Melbourne
Bonhams and Goodman, Fine Art, Melbourne, 6 May 2009, lot 54
Private collection, Melbourne

EXHIBITED
Marlborough Fine Art, London (label attached verso)
Sidney Nolan, Marborough-Gerson Gallery, New York, January 1965, cat. 2 (label attached verso) (p.10, in exhibition catalogue)
Sidney Nolan: Antarctica, The Fermoy Gallery, King's Lynn, Norfolk, 8 August - 1 September 1984, cat. 7 (illus. in exhibition catalogue)
Sidney Nolan: Antarctic Series, Nolan Gallery, Lanyon, Australian Capital Territory, 4 June - 7 September 1986, cat. 12
Sidney Nolan: Miners, Myths, Wildlife, Savill Galleries, Melbourne, 29 January - 26 February 2006, cat. 8 (label attached verso) (illus. in exhibition catalogue)
Sidney Nolan: Antarctic Journey, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria, 29 November 2006 - 25 February 2007, cat. 1 (label attached verso)(illus. in exhibition catalogue)


In 1964 Nolan visited Antarctica as a guest of the United State Navy fulfilling a boyhood passion for the continent and the story of its explorers: Shackleton, Scott and Mawson. Like his other series dealing with mythologised historical characters (Kelly, Burke and Wills, the ANZAC soldiers, Mrs Fraser and Bracefell) Nolan combined myth and landscape in his Antarctic series.

The Antarctic series of 1964 compromised of 63 documented paintings. The present example is one of only four painted in April and quite possibly the first in the series with the remaining works being painted between 23 August and 20 September.

'Sidney Nolan had mentioned that he had expected to find colours that went beyond the fairy-tale view of Antarctica as a frothy playground of pristine white. These first works stake out Nolan's claim, they are tough and uncompromising. In colour and treatment the paintings are quite literally black and blue. The paint is applied thick and densely in some places and scraped, rubbed and wiped to the 'bare bones' in other areas. Nolan... had expected snow-capped peaks like in Europe but instead the mountains appeared to be reverse, with snow on the ground and black volcanic rock on top. There was also the equally strange phenomenon where, due to the intense clarity of light, their eyes concocted an additional layer of mountains. The resulting mirage introduced a scale and proportion which at times seemed beyond human comprehension.

'The same strange phenomena inspired Nolan to first conceive of the Antarctic region as a series of abstract configurations of densely knitted patterns. A fierce angularity of shapes is used in each of these... paintings to depict elements of water, mountain and sky. In Antarctica (no.1 the present work) a comb like instrument and palette knife are used to scrape paint, turn it against the grain and leave behind sharply delineated edges and planes.'1

1. Rodney James, Sidney Nolan - Antarctic Journey, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington, 2006, p. 11-12