Sidney Nolan

'In the summer of 1951 and 1952, Sidney Nolan worked on a new series of large paintings combining bird's eye views of a lunar outback landscape in Central Australia remembered from aeroplane trips taken in 1949 and 1950, and religious themes absorbed in museums and chapels on a whirlwind car tour of France, Spain, Portugal and Italy in the European winter of 1950-51. This amalgam of Saint and Angel in a cratered landscape was a new direction for Nolan, his previous acclaimed series of forty-seven majestic Central Australian landscapes being, in his own words 'unpeopled immensities of wind-worn rock and bitter soil.'

James Gleeson, 'Landscapes triumph for Aust. Artist', The Sun, Sydney, 31 March 1950 quoted in Jane Clark, Sidney Nolan: Landscapes and Legends, National Gallery of Victoria, Cambridge University Press and International Cultural Corporation of Australia Limited, 1987, p. 109

Sidney Nolan's name is synonymous with the story of Australian art.

The first Australian art figure to receive international attention and acclaim, his raw and powerful, often brooding images are akin to psychodramas of the Australian landscape and its personalities.

Flight into Egypt is distinctive for the atmosphere of mysticism evoked by the surrealistic treatment of the landscape dominated by the presence of a beautiful and incongruously bountiful tree that rises magically from the red earth.

© Estate of Sidney Nolan/Bridgeman Art Library