SIDNEY NOLAN

Australian Galleries, Melbourne
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; purchased from the above in October 1965

Antartica by Nolan, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 21 September - 1 October 1965, cat. 12 (exhibited as 'Explorer & Pony')
Aspects of Australian Painting, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, October 1966, cat. 32
Sidney Nolan retrospective exhibition.  Paintings from 1937 to 1967, Art Gallery of New South Wales 13 September 1967 - 29 October 1967, National Gallery of Victoria, 22 November - 17 December 1967, Western Australian Art Gallery 9 January - 4 February 1968, cat. 132
Sidney Nolan: Antartic Journey, Mornington Peninsular Regional Gallery, Victoria, 29 November 2006 - 25 February 2007, cat. 34 

Alan McCulloch, 'A great documentary artist', Herald, 22 September 1965, p. 9, illus.
Keith Sinclair, 'Nolan (without heroes) in trouble', The Age, 22 September 1965, p. 5
Hal Missingham, Art Gallery of New South Wales Quarterly, October 1967, p. 370, illus
Sidney Nolan and Elwyn Lynn, Sidney Nolan - Australia, 1979, pp. 136 - 137, illus
Gil Docking, Aspects of Australian painting, 1996, cat. 23 illus
Rodney James, Sidney Nolan: Antarctic journey, Mornington Peninsula Art Gallery, 2006, illus.
Joanne Raheb-Mol, Art and Mind, 1998, illus. pl. 5.5
Department of Adult Education, 'Australian Painting', Current Affairs Bulletin, vol. 37, no. 1, p. 10, illus

Good condition. UV inspection reveals infill painting on horizontal scratch upper centre and diagonal scratch centre and horizontal scratch centre.
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Sidney Nolan's Antarctic Explorer continues his interest in the theme of explorers and man against the might of nature, while revealing his extraordinary ability to suggest temperature and atmosphere through colour.
This time it is the wastes and freezing cold of the southern end of the world, the lowest of horizons conveying the feeling of endlessness. Nolan visited the Antarctic in January 1964 with the writer Alan Moorehead, some of the results of his eight-day tour having an early viewing in his show at London's Marlborough Fine Art in May the following year. Writing in the exhibition catalogue, Moorehead noted 'the similarity of great extremes' found in the Antarctic and much of Central Australia. He continued, 'Both are dry deserts, the one of ice and the other of rock and sand, where rain seldom falls, and the occasional storms, rising to the pitch of hurricanes, leave behind them an absolute silence and stillness.'¹  Of man, Moorehead added, 'The human being is a midget in these immense spaces, and he can be blotted out in a moment.' Nolan's vision of the immensity is panoramic, imposing man and horse upon it, faceless in his mask-like appearance. Like the explorer fascinated by the earliest sight of this wonderment, Nolan imbues his painting with a sense of the innocent eye that accompanies seeing something for the first time. 'The colours', Nolan said, 'appear as if under intense moonlight.' ²

1. Alan Moorehead in Sidney Nolan: Recent Work, Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1965, p. 4
2. The Australian Women's Weekly, 15 September 1965, quoted in Jane Clark, Sidney Nolan: Landscapes & Legends, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1987, p. 147