SIDNEY NOLAN

Smith & Singer are delighted to offer Sidney Nolan’s Annunciation (1951) for private sale.

Sidney Nolan’s rare and remarkable images of religion hold a singular position within the artist’s oeuvre and coincided with his return to Australia from his first overseas experiences and the establishment of the Blake Prize for Religious Art.  The organisers of the Blake Prize were determined to encourage Australian artists to paint and exhibit religious subjects and thereby‘… get those paintings into our homes, and above all into our churches, to replace the cheap prints and the sentimental shams of mass-produced “sacred art” that so frequently disfigure them.’

During its formative years, the Blake Prize was one of the most prestigious art prizes in Australia, and proved extremely successful in encouraging, and in most instances initiating, many prominent contemporary artists to paint images of religion – a genre largely ignored by Australian artists.  Arthur Boyd, Donald Friend, James Gleeson, Weaver Hawkins, Elaine Haxton, Frank Hinder, Sali Herman, Sidney Nolan, Justin O’Brien, John Passmore, and Jeffrey smart all contributed significant works in the initial two prizes.

Following his European sojourn where he visited numerous cathedrals, churches, galleries and museums, Nolan found the Blake Prize an inspiration.  

Annunciation (1951) was completed on 21 December, four days before Christmas, recording the moment when the archangel Gabriel informed the virgin Mary: ‘You shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall give him the name Jesus.’  Nolan is particularly faithful to the traditional iconography, showing Mary seated, holding a book from which, according to St Bernard, she is reading the celebrated prophecy of Isaiah. Gabriel, clad in white, kneels before Mary, bearing a lily, the symbol of the Virgin’s purity.  At times the virgin was depicted within or standing at the door of a gothic building, while nearby the Romanesque structure crumbles into ruins.  Nolan locates these ruins in the Australian desert, thereby reinforcing the perception that Christ’s Incarnation heralded the New Dispensation that replaced the Old.

Nolan’s highly original religious imagery offers a dramatic synthesis of his Australian and European experiences.  As his first major series completed with the aid of a direct knowledge and understanding of European art and culture, they imposed a less familiar iconography on his more recognisable desert landscapes, and in turn increased his understanding of the Australian landscape.