Artwork of the Day - Nolan - River Shooting (Kelly)

Sir Sidney Nolan (1917-1992)
River Shooting (Kelly) 1964
Oil on board
120 x 150 cm
verso: 17 Nov 1964 Nolan
28 (circled) River Shooting / E5357 x S. Nolan
Marlborough Galleries Label, Stock No. NON4742 /
Centre Between Column (on stretcher)
no.8362

Provenance:
Marlborough-Gerson Gallery New York,
Corporate collection London

Exhibited:
Marlborough-Gerson Gallery New York 1964,
Grosvenor Fair London 2005

River Shooting (Kelly) 1964 is part of a small series of important paintings which precede and directly inform the monumental River Bend I (Australian National University) and River Bend II 1964-65. The role of Ned Kelly in Nolan’s art has been a constantly changing one throughout his career. His fascination with the Kelly myth was not a form of historical documentation, rather as Jane Clark explains, it adapted “ to suit the artist’s own experiences and moods… He has been a hero, a fool, a man who armoured himself against Australia, who faced it, didn’t face it, conquered it, lost it - ‘ambiguity personifed’.”1

The central focus of River Shooting 1964 is the wounded policeman, Constable Scanlon, who was murdered by Kelly at Stringybark Creek in the Wombat Ranges of North-eastern Victoria in October 1978 leading to the Gang’s apprehension two years later at Glenrowan, and to Kelly’s execution.

Nolan returned to the Ned Kelly subject late in 1964 after returning from travels through Africa and Antarctica. The dominant image of Nolan’s Kelly as mythic hero, which established the 1940s Kelly series as a quintessentially Australian symbol, is transformed in River Shooting into a universal figure; his humanity rather than his heroicism the emphasis here. The emphasis on the mythic hero figure, commanding in the landscape, has been reversed with the image of Kelly a vital but almost ghost-like presence among the colours and textures of the Australian bush.

From the early 1960s onwards Nolan worked consistently in oils for the first time. His earlier work up to around 1950 had relied heavily on the use of Ripolin enamel. River Shooting 1964 exemplifies Nolan’s prolonged search to achieve in his words a “stereoscopic effect” of the lush Australian bush. Nolan explained that he “found some solutions in Paul Cézanne’s Dans le parc du chateau (London National Gallery). I noticed that Cézanne had very broken shapes that he cut through with the trunks of trees. The stereoscopic effect comes partially from the sudden placement of the straight edge against the mottled and divided background.”2

1Clark. J., Sidney Nolan: Landscapes and Legends, ICCA, Sydney, 1987, p.163.
2 Sidney Nolan quoted in Lynn. E., Sidney Nolan: Australia, Sydney, 1979, p.130.