Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s

162 Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s SIDNEY NOLAN Sidney Nolan was born in Melbourne and was largely self-taught, other than night classes taken at the National Gallery School. He established his reputation through several key series of paintings depicting iconic Australian figures, including bushranger Ned Kelly, ill-fated explorers Robert O’Hara Burke and William Wills, and shipwreck survivor Eliza Fraser — all of whom, in some ways, were outsiders. Of the group, Mrs Fraser was perhaps an unexpected choice, reflecting both Nolan’s sense of himself as an outcast and the complex relationship he shared with his onetime lover and mentor Sunday Reed. It was from Sunday and her husband John’s creative enclave Heide, near Melbourne, that Nolan fled in July 1947, journeying to Brisbane to escape their entangled domestic situation. Keen also to establish the circumstances surrounding his brother’s drowning off Cooktown two years earlier, Nolan travelled north on a personal and professional quest. He was encouraged to explore the account of Mrs Fraser’s 1836 stranding off K’gari (known as Fraser Island between 1847 and 2023) following conversations with his friend Tom Harrisson, who had trained commandos on the island during World War Two, and the Brisbane-based librarian and poet Barrett Reid who had spent the previous summer at Heide. 1 In Brisbane, Nolan used Reid’s home as his base, making trips to K’gari and visiting the State Library of Queensland’s John Oxley Library. There he poured over tales of Fraser’s marooning, the time she spent with Traditional Owners the Badtjala and her eventual rescue by convict John Graham. In October 1947, Nolan spent a month on K’gari where he made an initial series of twelve paintings, including Mrs Fraser (pp.160–1), in which he explored the legend. He would show the artworks in his first commercial gallery exhibition at the Moreton Galleries, Brisbane, in February the following year. Note 1 Lynne Seear, ‘A wave to memory: Sidney Nolan Mrs Fraser ’, in Lynne Seear & Julie Ewington (eds), Brought to Light: Australian Art 1850–1965 , Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1998, p.200. Sidney Nolan , Escaped convict 1948