Sidney Nolan’s Woman on Beach, St Kilda is an object of fascination. It was painted in 1940 when Nolan was part of the Heide Circle, poised for his first solo exhibition. Yet to leave Australia but still inspired by European modernism, he set about reimagining his childhood suburb of St Kilda through the eyes of the avant-garde. 

For Nolan, St Kilda was his “kitsch heaven” – a realm of garish beauty and abandon, tinged by memories of a misspent youth. In this work, he pictures a woman emerging from a moonlit tent beneath the Big Dipper. Nolan was fascinated with tents – what lies behind the canvas? In this case, something does. On the verso of ‘Woman on Beach, St Kilda’ is another work, an abstracted landscape inscribed with ‘Newcastle’ circa 1938.

Forged in the beginnings of his career, this abstract work speaks to an artist hungry for opportunity and enthralled by his European contemporaries, particularly the abstract artist Paul Klee. Destitute but desperate to travel, Nolan created a series of abstractions like this to show Sir Keith Murdoch in hopes of winning a travelling scholarship. While he was unsuccessful, Murdoch was impressed with his daring, referring Nolan to art critic Basil Burdett who put him in fateful contact with the Reeds. 

Woman on Beach, St Kilda has been widely exhibited, including at the Scottish Royal Academy and the University of Durham. It speaks to Nolan’s fascination with St Kilda, his interest in abstraction and coming of age. The year after this work was painted, Nolan would leave his first wife and child to take up residence with John and Sunday Reed, with whom he was romantically entangled. Into their tent he went.

From a hugely significant period of Nolan’s career, Woman on Beach, St Kilda is a striking find for collectors of Nolan and Australian modernism. It is a strangely beguiling image. As writer Max Harris recalls, St Kilda “was peculiarly and secretly Nolan’s very own world… It was not difficult to discover what Nolan found down at St Kilda. It was of course himself”. 

Sidney NOLAN (1917 - 1992)
'Woman on Beach, St Kilda' 1940
oil on canvas on board
Image Size: 30 x 38 cm
Dimensions: 39 x 48 x 4 cm
Signed: Dated lower right
 
Comes with Letter of Provenance
 
Exhibited:

• Nolan, Hatton Gallery, University of Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne;
• Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield;
• Temple Newsam House, Leeds;
• Ferens Art Gallery, Hull;
• City Art Gallery, Bristol;
• Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool;
• Scottish Royal Academy, Edinburgh;
• City Art Gallery, Wakefield, March - November 1961, cat. 8, as Woman on beach.

Verso: Untitled abstraction, c.1938, oil and mixed media on board. This work can be removed from the verso of Woman on Beach, St Kilda - reach out to learn more. 

Inscribed: Newcastle, 30 x 38.5 cm; inscription refers to the inclusion of Woman on Beach, St Kilda in the 1961 exhibition in Newcastle upon Tyne. 

Condition: Very Good

(c) Sidney Nolan / Copyright Agency