Sidney Nolan at Lanyon, 11 March 1975, at the launch of the first public exhibition of works gifted to the nation. Photo: National Archives of Australia 2025.
Fifty years ago, three circumstances came together that led to Sidney Nolan’s gift to the nation.
Nolan (1917-1992), who was then aged in his late 50s and had spent the preceding couple of decades living in England, was homesick and wanted to leave a major legacy for the country of his birth.
For artists, the arts climate in Australia changed with the election of the Gough Whitlam federal Labor government in 1972 and Nolan felt that the time was right to support the arts in Australia.
The third circumstance was that Nolan heard that the Lanyon homestead, on the outskirts of Canberra, was being acquired for the nation, and he suggested to Whitlam that it would make a perfect venue in which to house his artwork.
These circumstances came together in March 1975, and Nolan visited the Lanyon Homestead for the launch of the first public exhibition of the artworks that he had gifted to the nation. Initially, Nolan had gifted 24 significant paintings, including some of the early Ned Kelly paintings and other paintings that he had repurchased from private collections. Over the years, the bequest grew to 218 works that are now held in the collection of the Canberra Museum + Gallery.
The main fly in the ointment came in 2007 when the ACT government moved the Nolan collection out of Lanyon and its dedicated Nolan Gallery to the CMAG building in Civic. At the time, it cited the unacceptable humidity levels at the Nolan Gallery.
Lady Mary Nolan, the artist’s widow, was furious as this went against the wishes of the artist to have his work displayed in a rural setting. With the death of Lady Nolan in 2016, the temporary move of the Nolan collection into the city became permanent.
Sidney Nolan, ‘The Male’ (Lyrebird) costume from The Display, 1964, on loan from the Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne, gift of the Australian Ballet, 1998. Photo: CMAG
To celebrate 50 years of Nolan’s gift to the nation, CMAG has mounted a group of exhibitions accompanied by concerts, public talks and a symposium. These celebrations will continue until March 2026.
Nolan was amazingly prolific and exceptionally multifaceted.
Barry Pearce, who curated Nolan’s major retrospective exhibition in Sydney in 2007, calculated that Nolan’s oeuvre, in paintings alone, stood at about 35,000 works. Nolan also had a vast output of graphics, monumental murals, paintings on glass and slate, sculptures in gold, as well as stage sets, costume designs and other theatre arts. Nolan was exceptionally well-read and well-travelled and possessed a marvellous artistic curiosity that led him to explore innovative techniques and ways of making images.
A highlight of the CMAG celebrations is a small but fascinating exhibition of Nolan’s designs for ballet, opera and the theatre. The exhibition looks at aspects of four stage productions – Nolan’s first commission Icare in 1940, The Rite of Spring, 1963, at Covent Garden, London, The Display, 1964, for the Australian Ballet, and Mozart’s opera, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, 1987, for the Royal Opera House.
Walter Stringer, Barry Kitcher as ‘The Male’ (Lyrebird) in the Australian Ballet production of The Display, 1964, exhibition print 2025 from an original colour slide. Photo: NLA
The most spectacular part of the exhibition is Nolan’s design for ‘The Male’ (Lyrebird) from Robert Helpmann’s ballet The Display. The costume has been borrowed from the Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne. It is startling, unusual and captivating. We can sense something of the original impact of the costume when worn by Barry Kitcher and recorded in a photograph by Walter Stringer.
Kitcher later recalled his performance at Covent Garden: “Princess Margaret came to the performance and she told me how much she enjoyed the performance. She was fascinated by the mechanism [of the costume] and asked me if I could open the tail, which I did.”
Sir Sidney Nolan beneath one of his lyrebird costumes designed for the Australian Ballet, 1987 John McKinnon Photo: NLA
In 1943, Nolan’s friend and fellow artist, Albert Tucker, presented an apt assessment of Nolan when he wrote in Angry Penguins, “His long immersion in radical modernism, prolific with magnificent trivialities, has paid dividends in the development of an individual perception of a very high order, and in the steady growth of a rare lyrical talent”.
The show at CMAG is a celebration of the restless Nolan and his lyrical talent and his gift to the nation that keeps on giving to the people of Canberra.
Nolan50, Installation view. Photo: CMAG
Nolan50: Sidney Nolan’s gift to the nation is open at Canberra Museum and Gallery, London Circuit and City Square, Canberra City, Monday to Friday from 10 am to 4 pm, and Saturday and Sunday from 12 noon to 4 pm until 8 March 2026.
Original Article published by Sasha Grishin on Region Canberra.
