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The Art Gallery of NSW has brought together all 27 of Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly paintings for the first time in almost 30 years, as part of a major exhibition on the artist's formative years.
The Art Gallery of NSW has reunited all 27 of Sidney Nolan's celebrated Ned Kelly paintings for the first time in almost 30 years, and the first time in Sydney for more than 60 years.
Ned Kelly Paintings Reunited in Sydney
The full set is on display as part of a new exhibition on Nolan's formative creative years. The gallery already had the first painting in the series, First-Class Marksman, having bought it for a record-breaking 5.4 million dollars in 2010. The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra held the other 26 paintings. In an admirable display of co-operation, the National Gallery crated up its paintings and trucked them to Sydney.
The series is considered a national treasure, well known and loved enough to inspire a gang of letter-box Ned Kellys in the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics. The paintings also influenced the most recent Australian film on the legendary bushranger, Justin Kurzel's True History of the Kelly Gang. The 26 works were valued at about 150 million dollars last year.
It's a nice reunion, said Denise Mimmocchi, the gallery's senior curator of Australian art, on a tour of the exhibition before it opens on Saturday. It's given us the opportunity to not just reunite them with the missing painting but also show them in a slightly different context. The 27 Kelly paintings are displayed at the Art Gallery of NSW in the same order as first shown by Nolan in 1948.
A Filmic Display of Nolan's Vision
In a darkened room, the 27 vibrant paintings are presented in the order that Nolan preferred when they were originally exhibited in Melbourne in 1948 rather than the order in which they were painted. They seem almost like the storyboard for a wild new bushranger film. Nolan was deeply inspired by film and animation so there is something of a filmic quality to the sequence, Mimmocchi said. We wanted to present them in that context.
The exhibition, Nolan: Origins, includes more than 150 works from his intense output as a young artist from the late 1930s until he left Australia for the United Kingdom in 1953. It shows how he went from modernist experimentation to a visionary who, with his landscapes, is credited with redefining a vision of the continent. The series was painted after Nolan deserted from the army in 1944 and lived under the assumed name Robin Murray.
Mimmocchi said the series attracted little attention when it was first exhibited in Australia and became celebrated only after arts patrons John and Sunday Reed showed it in Paris, Rome and London. It gained international exposure before coming back here, she said. Elspeth Pitt, the National Gallery's senior curator of Australian art, described the Ned Kelly paintings as some of the best-known and best-loved works in Australian art. They're key to the story of modernism in Australia, she said.
Modernism and Australian Identity
They're key also to the effort of artists in the 19th and 20th centuries to make myths around Australia and Australian identity, Pitt said. While they are usually on permanent display in Canberra, we appreciate the great significance of the exhibition, and the undertaking the Art Gallery of NSW has embarked on, so we really want to support them, she said. It's going to be a fantastic show.
Kurzel said the Nolan paintings influenced his 2019 film, based on a Peter Carey novel, particularly a work that had the gang member Steve Hart wearing a dress. There was something really playful and kind of abandoned about his paintings and a sense of fun and colour, too, he said. They're almost like paintings from a car spray garage. For them to be painted in the '40s in Australia, they must have been pretty avant garde and extreme.
But they still feel really fresh and new and bold. So is there a quid pro quo for the National Gallery in lending the Nolan paintings? Does it want its Sydney counterpart to send First-Class Marksman to join the other 26 paintings when they are back in Canberra? Oh, that would be wonderful, Pitt said. I'm sure we'll discuss that at some stage.
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theage:‘A nice reunion’: How Sidney Nolan’s signature Ned Kelly series was brought back togetherThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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Ned Kelly Series Reunited for First Time in Decades at NSW GalleryThe Art Gallery of NSW has reunited Sidney Nolan's celebrated Ned Kelly series for the first time in over 30 years, with the National Gallery of Australia lending its collection to complete the set. The exhibition displays all 27 paintings in the sequence Nolan originally preferred in 1948, offering a new context for the iconic Australian works.
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