Informal portrait of artist Sidney Nolan, aged 72. An Australian painter, draughtsman, printmaker ...

Informal portrait of artist Sidney Nolan, aged 72. An Australian painter, draughtsman, printmaker and stage designer, Nolan was born in Melbourne in 1917. Working as a commercial artist he studied intermittently at the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne from 1934. He also studied engraving and lithography at Atelier 17 in Paris in 1957. During the Second World War Nolan was conscripted into the army and served as a corporal with an Australian Supply Depot Company at Dimboola in the Wimmera District of Victoria from 1942 to 1944. In 1956 Nolan began the Gallipoli series, which he worked on for over 20 years. This series was influenced by Nolan's interest in the Trojan War, his reactions to and reflections on the ANZAC legend and photographs from Gallipoli, personal memories from childhood and the death of Nolan's younger brother Raymond who drowned while awaiting demobilisation at the end of the Second World War. In March 1978 the Memorial received 251 works from the series as a gift to the people from Nolan in memory of his brother. From 1950 Nolan lived mainly in Britain and he died in London in 1992 at the age of 75.