37. SIDNEY NOLAN

The psyche of the place has bitten into me deeply and I feel unresolved with it in a way that I cannot explain easily.¹

Lagoon (Mrs Fraser), 1958, is an exemplary work from Sidney Nolans second major series of paintings that focussed on Eliza Fraser and the Queensland island that came to bear her name. This 19th century episode involving her survival from shipwreck, the death of her husband, her treatment by Aborigines and rescue by a runaway convict, supposedly, whom she later betrayed, has been highly mythologised and written about by authors such as Patrick White and Michael Ondaatje.

It is part of a group of paintings produced over a fertile 18 month period during which time Nolan lived and worked in London, Paris and New York. The cosmopolitan nature of Nolans lifestyle was reflected in the tenor of the works. Vibrant, colourful and experimental, a number of themes, styles, observations and techniques were explored concurrently in each painting.

Nolan first travelled to Fraser Island in 1947, accompanied by the Brisbane-based poet Barrett Reid who later described Nolans infatuation with the story of Eliza Fraser and the natural beauty of the island. According to Reid, Nolan was struck by the contrast between open bush and dark, shadowy creeks. Nolan paddled up a rainforest creek, giving him a first-hand experience of its network of broken branches, tangled vines, bright-coloured flowers, fleshy ferns and palms that threatened to envelop all who entered it.₂ Native foliage, including the Crinum lily, are clearly visible in the work.

Lagoon (Mrs Fraser) epitomises the sort of conditions that Eliza Fraser encountered on Fraser Island and reveals her grim determination to survive and her transformation from middle-class respectability to degraded primal state. Towards the end of the series her body and that of the escapee, John Arnold (Nolans Bracewell), almost merge with the mangroves and rainforest. Bracewell, who engineered Eliza Frasers escape, is often recognisable only through the presence of his horizontal convict stripes.
In this painting, the two figures are camouflaged in bright and colourful stripes, spikes and shapes that Nolan ingeniously sets against a dark, nocturnal background. In this respect he was drawing upon his interest in the classical myth of Leda and the Swan and referencing Gallipoli paintings that he had produced in the same year. He is also recalling his 1947 trip from Maryborough to Fraser Island made at night.

Nolans first wife, Cynthia, has furnished a valuable description of Nolans working methods during this time. During their stay in New York, Nolan mastered the use of a new media and technique that accentuated his already fluent style: During the day he painted on the floor, first placing areas of colour on the prepared board, next sweeping on polyvinyl acetate until the whole area was thick with paint, then seizing a short handled squeegee and slashing and wiping, cornering like a skater, until another painting was finished.³

Lagoon (Mrs Fraser) was most probably painted in this way, and possibly combines PVA and dry pigment with another favourite medium Ripolin. The fast drying qualities of PVA and the enamel paint allowed him to layer the colours more easily and to expose and isolate grasses, shrubs and trees. The technique of paring back adds a ghostly and almost surreal overtone to this scene. The central protagonists are realised not as solid forms but as apparitions haunting a watery landscape.

For Nolan, Eliza Fraser represented a woman driven to the depths of despair. She becomes our eyes, revealing the nuances of a place few white middle-class Australians had actually seen. Lagoon (Mrs Fraser) epitomises the way Nolan immersed himself in his subject, drawing upon oral histories and stories as well as from the accretions of finely observed landscapes and composite natural forms.

Many of the 1957-58 Eliza Fraser paintings were exhibited at Durlacher Brothers Gallery in New York in 1958 and again in England in 1961. Works such as Lagoon (Mrs Fraser) testify to the continuing significance of the Eliza Fraser story in Nolans imagination and the verdant landscapes he encountered on the island a decade earlier.

Footnotes
1. Sidney Nolan, Letter to John Reed, from Fraser Island, 28 August 1947, in Underhill, N., ed. Nolan, S., Nolan on Nolan: Sidney Nolan in his own words, Penguin, Camberwell, Victoria, 2007, p.138.
2. Reid, B., Nolan in Queensland: some biographical notes on the 1947-8 paintings, Art and Australia, vol.5, no.2, Summer 1967, pp.446-452.
3. Nolan, C., Open negative: An American memoir, Art and Australia, vol.5, no.2, Summer 1967, p.435.

Rodney James BA (Hons); MA