Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

Sidney Nolan Portrait of Barrett Reid 1947 Oil on cardboard on composition board 74x 62.1cm Purchased 1984 Queensland Art Gallery Brisbane, in February 1948. In these works Nolan grappled both with the exotic, new landscape, its lush vegetation and brilliant blue lakes, and with the Fraser legend, which told (in various permutations) how the survivors of the Stirling Castle shipwreck were captured, stripped and enslaved by the island's original inhabitants. The 'modernist' content of the exhibition provoked the usual conservative backlash in the local press, despite a catalogue introduction by critic Clive Turnbull pronouncing Nolan to be 'the most interesting of all' the younger Australian painters.10Only two works sold — one, Fraser Island, to the poet Judith Wright, who conducted a spirited defence of Nolan in the Courier-Mail. However, the most startling and successful painting in the series, Mrs Fraser 1947 (Queensland Art Gallery), was not for sale. Indeed, it remained in the artist's estate until 1995, an indication of its status for Nolan as a raw and private signifier.1 Mrs Fraser is one of Nolan's most disturbing works. Asubmissive, faceless female is placed on all fours in a mangrove landscape made impenetrable to her view. She is collecting wood for her captors' fire, and the sticks are scattered in her path like bones thrown out for a dog. The painting is cut across by a low horizon punctuated by three tall palms, testifying, with the intense, unclouded sky, to the vivid tropical geography she so desperately inhabits. Two of the sentinel palms extend up beyond the picture frame, reasserting the endless perspective stretching above and over her, and emphasising her imprisonment in the foreground. The taut skin of her figure is painted with touches of yellow, white and blue, a cold and grisly palette. Nolan plays his favourite technical hand — he builds a narrative out of abstract shapes and spatial ambiguity. In this depiction of Eliza Fraser, Nolan appears to have been particularly inspired by a 1937 account of the convict John Graham's experiences, written and illustrated by Robert Gibbings. (In some versions of the tale, Graham was the convict who rescued Eliza Fraser and led her to freedom.) Nolan borrows from John Graham (Convict) 1824 — An Historical 204 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965