Lot 44

Overall good condition. Upon close inspecition, minor fly sports, minor surface scratches to the edges, and pigment marks (although these are possibly from the artist's studio). Through the upper centre there appears to be evidience of a liquid previously having come into contact with the surface - mostly translucent, but a small area is brown in tint.


The opinions expressed in the condition reports are a guide only and should not be treated as a statement of fact. Prospective buyers are encouraged to inspect articles for sale at our pre-sale viewing where Leonard Joel staff are available for advice.
Leonard Joel makes no guarantee of the originality of mechanical or applied components. Absence of reference to such modifications does not imply that a lot is free from modifications.

Tony Reichardt, London
Solander Gallery, Canberra
Deutscher~Menzies, Melbourne, 28 August 2002, lot 85
Private collection, Melbourne

Sir Sidney Nolan: Paintings and Prints, Solander
Gallery, Canberra, 21st Anniversary Exhibition, 5 Mar – 2 Apr 1995, possibly cat. no. 9

Sidney Nolan Retrospective, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2 Nov 2007 - 3 Feb 2008, cat. no.100
Touring exhibition:
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 22 Feb - 18 May 2008
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 6 June - 31 August 2008

Pearce, B., Sidney Nolan, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2007, p. 206 (illus.)

Sidney Nolan felt a connection to the legend of Ned Kelly, infamous Australian bushranger, from an early age. Aside from Nolan's own fascination with various outsider figures, his grandfather, a policeman in north-eastern Victoria, had been involved in tracking the bushranger and his gang.
Nolan's first studies depicting Ned Kelly date to 1945, shortly after which he and Max Harris, a poet and co-editor of the Angry Penguins journal, travelled together to Glenrowan. The Siege of Glenrowan in 1880 was the historic gunbattle between the gang and police in which Kelly was finally captured.
Nolan also had close affinity with 'Kelly Country', having visited relatives in the lower Goulburn valley from a young age, developing his love of the surrounding landscape. An understanding of landscape was a motivation for many of his resulting paintings:

"I find the desire to paint the landscape involves a wish to hear more of the stories that take place in the landscape … which persist in the memory, to find expression in such household sayings as "game as Ned Kelly".

The landscape is therefore a crucial part of the Kelly paintings. The story gives meaning to the place, and in Dam in Glenrowan the structure and atmosphere of the country is at the forefront. Nolan uses a limited palette and minimal pictorial detail, emphasising instead the vast landscape with poetic sensibility. The land stretches far into the distant horizon, maintaining the focus on the dam - a glimmering oasis a suggestion of life in an otherwise absent landscape. More than 20 years after his first Kelly paintings, he revisits a significant site of one of Australia's most iconic moments in history, once rife with action, yet now reverting to its placid natural state.

© The Trustees of the Sidney Nolan Trust/Bridgeman Images