An introduction to Sidney Nolan. An introduction to the perception of WW1 through the eyes of Art. Australians at War. Gallipoli.

2. “Sidney Nolan: the Gallipoli series constitutes a
personal and public interpretation of a
campaign that cost so many Australian lives,”
Acting Director of the UQ Art Museum
Michele Helmrich said.
Nolan donated this collection to the Memorial
in 1978 in memory of his soldier brother, who
died in a tragic accident just before the end of
the Second World War.
Famed for his Ned Kelly paintings, we had the
pleasure of working with Sidney Nolan’s lesser
known, but equally important, Gallipoli series
held by the Australian War Memorial.
For the exhibition identity we featured four of
Nolan’s most striking portraits of soldiers with
graphics and typography chosen to convey a
reverence and a level of refinement befitting
works of such significance. Poignant quotes by
Sidney Nolan were used throughout the
exhibition to voice Nolan’s personal and public
lament on Gallipoli. The colour palette was
drawn from those predominant in the works –
the dark red and brown of the battlefield and
the soldier’s uniforms and the deep blue of
the sea.

3. Sidney Nolan (1917–1992) was one of Australia’s most complex,
innovative, and prolific artists. In 1978 Nolan presented the
Gallipoli series to the Australian War Memorial. These 252
drawings and paintings, completed over a 20-year period, were
donated in memory of his brother Raymond, a soldier who died in
a tragic accident just before the end of the Second World War.
Gallipoli was a theme to which Nolan constantly returned
throughout his artistic career.
Sidney Nolan: the Gallipoli series
showcases a selection of these works, which constitute both a
personal and public lament, commemorating not just the death of
Nolan’s brother but a campaign that had cost so many Australian
lives. The exhibition offers a rare opportunity for visitors to
experience these striking and iconic works.

4. One of Australia's most innovative and prolific artists, Nolan was born two years after the Gallipoli landing on
25 April 1915, and said the events of the First World War permeated his life as he grew up in the suburbs of
Melbourne. It was not until he was living on the Greek island of Hydra in the mid-1950s, however, that he
started to explore the idea of a series of works with a military and heroic theme.
He made a one-day visit to Gallipoli and was profoundly moved by the place that had seen so much bloodshed.
Sidney Nolan: Explanation of Gallipoli Series

5. Origins
In 1955 Nolan and his wife, Cynthia, moved to the Greek island of Hydra at the invitation of George Johnston
and Charmian Clift. Inspired by his reading of Robert Graves’s The Greek myths, and Homer’s Iliad, Nolan began
work on a Trojan War series. At Johnston’s urging, he read Alan Moorehead’s New Yorker article which
discussed the geographical proximity of Gallipoli and Troy and the similarities between these two famous
campaigns. As it happened, Moorehead was then also living nearby, on the island of Spetsae, completing what
would become his best-selling book on the Gallipoli campaign.

6. Meanwhile, Nolan’s own research had led him to the archaeological museum in Athens, where he became
fascinated by classical sculpture and the depiction of ancient Greek warriors on vases. Around this time he also
briefly visited Gallipoli and the site of ancient Troy.
Little wonder that Nolan soon began to explore the connections between Troy and Gallipoli in his art.

7. Identification disk (1957)
Gallipoli male figure in striding pose,
identity disc around neck, left leg
missing and replaced with angled prop,
representation of rifle in figure's left
hand. Nolan stated that the stump leg
derives from an antique statue which
he saw supported by a prop in a
museum in Delphi or Athens (from
interview 13 April 1978).
As a child Nolan saw these men who
returned from the First World War with
missing limbs and these statues of
naked Greek heroes with their missing
limbs would have bore a great
resemblance. The upside down rifle is
also a direct quotation from the 'Ned
Kelly' paintings.

8. Gallipoli riders (c.1961)
Two Gallipoli soldiers on horseback, one with rifle. They appear to resemble Greek warriors going
into battle holding a spear. At this time Nolan was again interested in Troy and was painting Trojan
War scenes until 1962. In an interview on 13 April 1978, Nolan stated that the work relates to the
Homeric struggle, especially the horse, as the Homeric heroes were horse breakers.

9. Gallipoli landscape with
recumbent Greek figure
(c.1956)
Gallipoli landscape with recumbent
Greek figure on a piece of Greek
architecture over blue sea with cliffs in
background. Nolan is here overtly
playing off the themes oaf the Trojan
War and the Anzac story.

10. Australian Identity
Nolan’s Gallipoli portraits represent an attempt to define the
Australian national character. They provide timeless images of the
ANZACs: the young and the old, the innocent and the war-weary, the
bushman and the city-dweller.
Nolan’s early portraits in the Gallipoli series, such as Kenneth and
Soldier, Arthur Boyd, are of imposing figures. In their slouch hats
and emu plumes, these men give off a sense of bravado. A degree of
optimism about the war and its outcome can be in their faces,
drawn in bold washes of brown and green. In contrast, the later
portraits were painted in lurid colours which accentuated the
trauma of battle. These young soldiers have distorted faces, their
eyes shaded or blood-shot, and they are disengaged and distant.
The portraits chart Nolan’s 20-year struggle to create a visual
language with which to express the Gallipoli tragedy. Even in 1978
he still talked about painting more images as he felt he had not
thoroughly explored this momentous event in Australia’s history.
Instead, other ventures and travels drew him away and he never
returned to the Gallipoli story.

11. Kenneth (1958)
Portrait of soldier wearing plumed hat
and tunic, thought to bear a
resemblance to Nolan's friend Kenneth
von Bibra who was killed in Syria in the
Second World War.

12. Gallipoli soldier (1961)
Head of a Gallipoli soldier in blue and
yellow wearing a hat.

13. Head of a Gallipoli soldier
(1961)
Portrait of a Gallipoli soldier. Nolan was
very interested in Australian types and
faces and he wanted to show that
these bushmen and city lads had been
isolated at Gallipoli with all their
exuberance, youth and innocence, to
be confronted with the horrors of war.
It relates to Nolan's concept of the
hero as part of the Australian and
ancient Greek ideal.

14. Head of a Gallipoli Soldier
(c.1961)
Head of a Gallipoli soldier in green,
wearing a hat. This portrait very much
relates to Nolan's idea of Australian
bush mythology and could easily fit in
with the Burke and Wills series.
Nolan was very interested in Australian
archetypes and faces and he wanted to
show that these bushmen and city lads
had been isolated at Gallipoli with all
their exuberance, youth and innocence,
to be confronted with the horrors of
war. It relates to Nolan's concept of the
hero as part of the Australian and
ancient Greek ideal.

15. Young soldier
Head of Gallipoli soldier with bloodshot
eyes. The bright colour of the
background belie the portrait of the
soldier. He appears to be in a state of
shell-shock. It is reminiscent of his 'Head
of a soldier', 1942, in the collection of
the National Gallery of Australia, which
represents Nolan's reaction to the
Second World War as lunacy.
When Nolan returned to the 'Gallipoli'
series in 1977 the portrait types of
soldiers had lost their spark of
innocence and somehow felt tarnished.
Time had caught up with their
innocence and Australia's and
disenchantment had set in. They
appeared corrupted by what they had
experienced and seen at Gallipoli.

16. Head of a Gallipoli soldier
Head of a Gallipoli soldier with white
face wearing a slouch hat on green
background. The bright colour of the
background belie the portrait of the
soldier. His face is pale and eyes hollow,
he appears to be in a state of shell-
shock.

17. Head of Gallipoli soldier in pink
and gold
Head of Gallipoli soldier wearing hat;
pink background at right; gold at left.
The bright almost neon colours of the
background belie the portrait of the
soldier. He appears to be masked which
could be hiding his innocence and
shame.

18. Head of Gallipoli soldier
saluting
Head of Gallipoli soldier saluting, with
green background.

19. The Landscape
The paintings in Nolan’s Gallipoli series depict landscapes that are
a fusion of both the real and the imaginary. The landscape that
Nolan would have seen when he visited Gallipoli was dominated by
an impenetrable growth of thorny shrubs, similar to what visitors
can see today. Then and now, the dry escarpments above ANZAC Cove
are much as they were in 1915, and from Chunuk Bair, the undulating
ridges and gullies unfold themselves. But Nolan’s landscapes are
also poetic evocations, a lament for a place where so many lives
were lost.
Nolan’s passion for landscape painting had begun during his
military service in Western Victoria. There the endless blue sky
and the rolling wheat fields provided him with a new artistic
genre to explore and new forms to develop.
His interpretive approach to landscape continued to evolve while
working on the Gallipoli series. His discovery of a German textile
dye allowed him to experiment and create barren and scarred
landscapes on 12 x 10-inch coated art paper. Sheet after sheet
would be covered using textile dyes and wax crayons. Often the
nature of the materials themselves would lead to a change of
style and technique.

20. 'Gallipoli landscape II' (1957)
'Gallipoli landscape II' (1957) by Sidney
Nolan. Drawing of Gallipoli landscape
with steep cliffs in brown and pink, and
blue sea and a reflection of the cliffs in
the water.
It is one of the earliest Gallipoli
landscapes in the series.

21. Gallipoli landscape (c.1960)
Gallipoli landscape with hills and cliffs.
The landscape is quite dark with a
grey/brown mass in the foreground
and a mottled expanse of dark brown
with white highlights patterned by the
top of a brush in the middle ground.
In the distance there are overlapping
grey and green hills with a green sky
applied with horizontal strokes and
broken on the horizon by strokes of
yellow and white crayon. Nolan gives a
sense of lament and sadness in an
empty landscape that has witnessed
the horrors of war.

22. Gallipoli landscape VIII (1961)
Gallipoli landscape in green. The
technique Nolan has used to scrape
back the paint surface evokes a sense
of an arid , unforgiving landscape.
The sky is streaked with white crayon
which resembles explosions and smoke
in the murky sky.

23. Gallipoli landscape (c.1960)
Dramatic Gallipoli landscape of shaggy cliffs in pink, brown and green, meeting a blue sky streaked
with pink strokes of crayon.
The work was presented in memory of the artist's brother Raymond who drowned in 1945 on
returning from military service at the end of the Second World. War.

24. Battle
Nolan’s reading of classical Greek literature inspired his depiction
of Australian soldiers as “reincarnations of the ancient Trojan
heroes of mythical times”. His paintings and drawings of the
Australians on Gallipoli recall the images of Greek heroes, who
are shown fighting naked and without their armour on vases of the
classical period.
Inspired by these powerful, physical figures, Nolan depicts the
modern soldier as someone caught up in a bloody and violent war.
Artillery fire became a deadly part of the ANZACs’ daily lives on
Gallipoli. But Nolan saw a terrible beauty in the bursting shells;
he depicts them as figures that slide across the surface of the
paper in almost balletic formations.

25. Gallipoli figures in battle I
(1962)
Group of Gallipoli figures in
combat, half immersed in the sea
water. The work refers to links
between Anzac's and classical
figures; for example, Heracles
and Antaeus, wrestling giants, or
Homeric heroes in battle. The
soldiers wrestling also relates to
black figure pottery of the 7th
century BC. Black figure pottery
usually represented the Gods or
the heroes of Greek history and
mythology engaged in scenes of
battle and hunting.
When the Anzac's arrived at Gallipoli, many British officers were awestruck when faced with the tall,
bronzed Anzac's that reminded them of the Greek heroes and gods. Much was written by the British
officers and soldiers about this resemblance at the time.
The Australians discarded much of their uniform, often only wearing boots, shorts and hat when
going into battle.

26. Gallipoli figures in shell-burst (C.1962)
Two Gallipoli figures amidst explosion.

27. Gallipoli soldier in red amid
explosion (1961)
Gallipoli soldier in red amidst
explosion.
The artist stated (interview 13 April
1978) that this work represents a
shattered body.

28. Gallipoli figures in battle amid
shell-fire (1962)
Two naked Gallipoli figures in combat
amidst shell fire. The figures are partly
immersed in the sea. These refer to
links between Anzac's and classical
figures, for example Heracles and
Antaeus, wrestling with giants, or
Homeric heroes in battle. The soldiers
wrestling also relates to black figure
pottery of the 7th century BC. Black
figure pottery usually represented the
Gods or the heroes of Greek history
and mythology engaged in scenes of
battle and hunting. When the Anzac's
arrived at Gallipoli, many British
officers were awestruck when faced
with the tall, bronzed Anzac's that
reminded them of the Greek heroes
and gods. Much was written by the
British officers and soldiers about this
resemblance at the time.

29. The Sea
Nolan’s images were often inspired by the photographs that he
knew from The ANZAC book, and those he viewed at the Imperial
War Museum in London. Many of the photographs depicted soldiers
bathing, or working and relaxing in and around the shore.
A sense of the sea pervades the campaign, whose very goal was to
seize control of the Dardanelles, the narrow stretch of water
that separated Gallipoli and Troy. The Australians who clambered
ashore on 25 April 1915 at what came to be known as ANZAC Cove
would sometimes return to swim in its waters. To escape the
grime, the filth, and the vermin of the trenches, they were willing
to brave the Turkish shrapnel that occasionally spattered the
beach.
Many of Nolan’s ideas about war and death came together in the
Gallipolidiptych, a major work whose water imagery alludes to
the risk of drowning. When the painting was exhibited, one critic
praised the work for showing how “flesh and blood soldiers, the
real overlapping the mythical, the strong holding the weak, sink
or swim towards inevitable destruction”.

30. Drowned soldier at Anzac as Icarus
(1958)
Cliffs along coastline, with drowned body
floating in the sea. The body has a red cross on
torso a symbol of the military medical service.
With this image Nolan has used a number of
references. On the surface it represents the
soldiers that drowned on the first morning at
Gallipoli. It is also a reference to the photo in
the Anzac Book of General Birdwood swimming
at Gallipoli. In 1945 Nolan's brother Raymond
drowned at Cooktown whilst waiting to be
demobilized from the army after serving for
almost three years in New Guinea.
This is the most personal reference in this work and was often repeated in his other drowned soldiers
at Gallipoli works. The most prominent reference is to Icarus, a character from Greek mythology. Icarus'
father, Daedalus, attempted to escape from his exile in Crete, where he and his son were imprisoned at
the hands of King Minos, the king for whom he had built the Labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur.
Daedalus fashioned a pair of wings of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Before they took off
from the island, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea.
Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky, but came too close to
the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus fell into the sea in the area which bears his name, the Icarian Sea
near Icaria, an island southwest of Samos. Nolan was here alluding to the heroic audacity of the
Australian soldiers at Gallipoli on that first day yet using Icarus to symbolise the lost hopes, dreams and
ambitions of the young Australian men.

31. 'Drowned Gallipoli soldier'
(1958)
Figure of drowned Gallipoli soldier,
body and head separated. The image of
the drowned figure in the 'Gallipoli'
series has two sources.
It's initial reference is to that of the
Anzac's who drowned on that first
morning at Gallipoli as they landed on
the beach. The submerged drowned
figure and Nolan's use of red, blue and
brown/green merging together
suggests stagnant blood-stained water,
a sight that would have confronted the
surviving soldiers that day on the
beach.
The drowned lifeless floating figure also
relates to the drowning in 1945 of
Nolan's brother Raymond which he
stated in an interview (13 April 1978).

32. [Figure in landscape] (1957)
Gallipoli landscape with cliffs with
figure with outstretched arms in
foreground.
The figure appears to be falling or
drowning and Nolan has smudged the
paint with his fingers to reveal the
figure.
The work was used as an illustration for
a book of poems by Randolph Stow
along with other similar works by
Nolan (interview 13 April 1978).

33. Themes and influences
Ms Wilkins says the exhibition is divided into themes including landscape, battle, the sea and
Australian identity.
"You start off with origins - so that deals with very much where he starts developing his interest
and where his information comes from," she said.
"There's also a theme on battle and that looks at soldiers fighting. He got the idea for [the imagery]
from looking at Greek vases which showed the Greek soldiers fighting in hand-to-hand combat.
"There's also the sea and that looks at the drownings but also the lighter side where the soldiers
tried to sort of bathe.“
Ms Wilkins says the works vary greatly in style and size and evidence of Nolan's other works can
also be seen in some of the paintings.
"Nolan is really well known for Ned Kelly and Burke and Wills and Eliza Fraser, and particularly
when you look at some of the portraits you feel like some of the personalities in the portraits could
almost be out of Burke and Wills or Eliza Fraser or those other works that he's done in the past,"
she said.
"They're overlapping. Because, of course, when Nolan does the series over a 20-year period it's not
the only thing he's painting. He's doing other things as well. He's travelling around the world and
having lots of other experiences.
"He always painted and drew in bursts, so he had frenetic periods that could last for weeks and
then he wouldn't do anything for three months.“
Research Site 1: Research Site 2:

34. Background painting:
Gallipoli Landscape
Artist: Sir Sidney Nolan
One of Australia's most innovative and prolific artists, Nolan was born two years after the Gallipoli
landing on 25 April 1915, and said the events of the First World War permeated his life as he grew
up in the suburbs of Melbourne.
It was not until he was living on the Greek island of Hydra in the mid-1950s, however, that he
started to explore the idea of a series of works with a military and heroic theme.
He made a one-day visit to Gallipoli and was profoundly moved by the place that had seen so
much bloodshed.
Sidney Nolan Exhibition
Assembled:
A. Ballas