Sidney Nolan is considered among Australia’s greatest artists. His legacy is entwined with myth - Ned Kelly haunting the Australian outback, Gallipoli, Burke and Wills - all told in inventive ways.

This work features his most iconic subject, Ned Kelly. When he first studied Kelly, Nolan read everything there was to read about him. He saw a tragic figure — a doomed outsider, mythologised in the Australian imagination and a surrogate for the artist’s own feelings. This work, Kelly Bulldogging, captures Nolan’s most iconic subject at full force. The title evokes both the rodeo act of wrestling a steer to the ground and Kelly’s own defiant struggle against authority — a contest of will, grit, and survival.

Nolan is represented in every state gallery and internationally at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and London’s Tate. His Ned Kelly series transformed Australian art. Fiercely iconic, this work embodies that spirit — a must for any collector serious about Australian art.

Sidney NOLAN (1917 - 1992)
'Kelly Bulldogging' 1955
ink on paper
Image Size: 25 x 28 cm
Dimensions: 49 x 51 x 5 cm
Signed: Signed, dated and inscribed verso: Kelly / Bulldogging / Nolan / 3 / 1 / 55
Comes with Letter of Provenance
Related Works: Related Kelly series works from 1953-55 are illustrated in Colin MacInnes, Sidney Nolan, Thames and Hudson, London, 1961, pls. 57-58, 63, 67-69
Condition:Excellent:
(c) Sidney Nolan / Copyright Agency