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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nov 28, 2023 | Bonhams | Sydney | Important Australian Art | 28 | $****** - ****** | African Head |
paintings
122 x 91.5 cm (48.03 x 36.02 in)
oil on composition board
and signed lower right: "N Nolan" signed, dated and titled verso: "Head / Africa / 1st Jan 1963 / 1/1/63 / Nolan"
Mr Sidney Nolan, United Kingdom
Lady Nolan, United Kingdom
Private collection, Adelaide, acquired from the above in 2014
Africa and Australia , Sidney Nolan Trust, Prestiegne, United Kingdom, August 2008, cat. 6, as Africa Head, 1st January 1963
Sidney Nolan Heads , Sidney Nolan Trust, Prestiegne, United Kingdom, 2014, cat. 13, as Head (African)
possibly, African Journey , Marlborough Fine Art, London, May - June 1963, cat. 6, 7 or 8, all as Head
Elwyn Lynn, Sidney Nolan: Myth and Imagery , Macmillan, London, 1967, p. 42
Curatorial Notes, Africa and Australia , Sidney Nolan Trust, Presteigne, United Kingdom, August 2008 (illus.)
Andrew Turley, "Mr Nolan I Presume?", Look Magazine , Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, December 2014, p. 38-39 (illus.)
Andrew Turley, "Sidney Nolan"s African Journey", Artist Profile Magazine , issue 41, November 2017, p. 123 (illus.)
This painting is to be included in the forthcoming publication: Andrew Turley, Nolan"s Africa , Miegunyah Press, Mebourne University Publishing, Melbourne, 2024
With a face that almost isn"t there, revealed through a flurry of paint and a treatment that was soon to seep into his animal and Rimbaud inspired works, African Head is one of the richest figural works from Sidney Nolan"s unique "African" paintings.
When Marlborough Fine Art unveiled 35 of them in London, the response was significant. The BBC collected works to broadcast them live, a private viewing was held for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II where she purchased for HRH Prince Philip,1. Francis Bacon was reported to have praised their use of colour in a rare comment and it was written that on opening night Princess Margaret tried to squeeze through the crowd as her husband, The Earl of Snowdon, "ploughed a way through the throng for his missus".2
Creatively Nolan"s African works blended European history and African experience as a form of artistic renewal. He took things he had seen or experienced, splitting, joining and interweaving them to give his painted image a completely different meaning. Experimentation and innovation to create new forms.
On the roads of Africa a preoccupied Nolan had stared at faces. "These faces look like paintings by Bacon", he had said to his wife Cynthia, constantly comparing the richness of life to past and present visual culture, "but Bacon"s with a twist as though they had been repainted by somebody else".3
Figuratively African Head echoes the pose, robes and hats of the Popes painted by both Valasquez and Bacon. Sidney had an affinity for one of Bacon"s "Popes", held in the New York Museum of Modern Art. That same "Pope" was shown at the Tate"s Francis Bacon Retrospective in London in 1962.4 It was an exhibition Sidney had attended just four months before his African travel.
But African Head is also distinctly Nolan. The brush strokes create ropes of clothing anchoring a poised yet determined head, while the slope of the body, the angle of the head and the slightly off balance position in the frame create a forward sense of movement. It is Nolan realism at its best, demonstrating his ability to lock energy into the paint. The features - eyes, nose and mouth - waft up from the deeper layers of paint, in the same way as the facial planes of his 1963 Kelly"s, and the brilliant eggshell blue expanse of Australia is now a lighter, dustier African sky.
With references to a population Nolan described as "the new proletariat", colonialism, a powerful and unscrupulous Pope who took on the deceptive title of "Innocent" and Uganda"s 1962 transition to Independence, this painting is a remarkable example of how he could capture, transport and recreate a moment cloaked in nuance and meaning. With luminosity and richness, he worked up a timeless image from a flat plane and scraped paint, to ring in a new world order.
1. Confirmed in correspondence with Alex Buck, Senior Collections Information Assistant (Paintings) The Royal Collection, York House, St. James"s Palace, London, 2012
2. Larry Boys, "Africa in Vivid Nolan colour", The Bulletin , Sydney, 24th August 1963, p.32
3. Sidney Nolan in Uganda, 30th September 1962 quoted in Cynthia Nolan, One Traveller"s Africa , Methuen and Co Ltd London, 1965, p.108
4. "Study for Portrait VII 1953", lent by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, no.29 in "Francis Bacon" 24 May - 1 July 1962, The Tate Gallery catalogue, London 1962
Sidney Nolan (1917-1992)
African Head, 1963
initialled and signed lower right: "N Nolan"
signed, dated and titled verso: "Head / Africa / 1st Jan 1963 / 1/1/63 / Nolan"
oil on composition board
122.0 x 91.5cm (48 1/16 x 36in).
