Sidney Nolan 'Paradise Garden' published by R. Alistair McAlpine Publishing Ltd., London, 1971
Title: Paradise Garden
Author: Sidney Nolan
Publisher: R. Alistair McAlpine Publishing Ltd., London
Publication Date: 1971
Edition: First edition. One of 2890 copies of the standard edition. There were also 110 copies bound as a deluxe edition and 20 copies with original drawings signed by the artist
Format: Hardcover in gilt-illustrated green cloth binding with double dust-jacket of paper and glassine
Pages: 110 pp
Condition: Very good
Stock Number: RB03687
A luxuriously produced volume of poetry by Sidney Nolan accompanied by full-page colour plates from a selection of Nolan’s Paradise Garden series paintings, interleaved with coloured crayon drawings printed on acetate overlays. The Paradise Garden poems were a response to Nolan’s complicated relationship with his early patrons, John and Sunday Reed, whom he had first met in 1938. Nolan entered into an affair with Sunday, during which time he painted his famed 1946-47 Ned Kelly series at the Reed’s home ‘Heide’ an artistic Eden outside Melbourne. Sunday was intelligent, a modern thinker, well-read and a passionate gardener. She oversaw extensive tree and rose plantings at Heide in what would become a celebrated garden, based on the informal principles of the English garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. By the time of her death in 1981 much of Heide’s 15 acres was densely forested with exotic and native flora. Together the Reeds created a fertile creative space for many young painters and poets who together altered the course of Australia art in the 1930 and 40s. When the relationship broke down, Nolan left, leaving hundreds of his works (including the Kelly series) in the Reed’s care. Later he demanded their return. The Reeds agreed but refused to part with the Kelly paintings, seeing them as integral to the foundation collection of the proposed Heide Museum of Modern Art. The subsequent ownership dispute intensified the bitterness between them and the paintings were eventually gifted by the Reeds to the National Gallery of Australia in 1977.
Nolan’s monumental Paradise Garden, from which the present volume takes its name, comprises over 1320 images. It was was inspired by Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, Britten’s cantata after the English poet Christopher Smart’s poem Jubilate Agno, a hymn to God and his creations. Nolan first based the floral subjects on plants from his garden in Putney, west London, but later developed the work to include Australian wild flowers based on his memory of the desert of Central Australia in full flower after rain. A selection of these images are reproduced in the present volume. Painted over two years during 1968 and 1970, Paradise Garden was initially installed at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. It was later exhibited at the Tate in London, before Nolan gifted it to the Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne.
Nolan never commented publicly on the details of his relationship with the Reeds, however in discussing these late 1960s floral works he often alluded to the biblical themes of The Fall, The Temptation and The Expulsion – “like Milton” he once said, “I would like to inhabit Paradise.”
Title: Paradise Garden
Author: Sidney Nolan
Publisher: R. Alistair McAlpine Publishing Ltd., London
Publication Date: 1971
Edition: First edition. One of 2890 copies of the standard edition. There were also 110 copies bound as a deluxe edition and 20 copies with original drawings signed by the artist
Format: Hardcover in gilt-illustrated green cloth binding with double dust-jacket of paper and glassine
Pages: 110 pp
Condition: Very good
Stock Number: RB03687
A luxuriously produced volume of poetry by Sidney Nolan accompanied by full-page colour plates from a selection of Nolan’s Paradise Garden series paintings, interleaved with coloured crayon drawings printed on acetate overlays. The Paradise Garden poems were a response to Nolan’s complicated relationship with his early patrons, John and Sunday Reed, whom he had first met in 1938. Nolan entered into an affair with Sunday, during which time he painted his famed 1946-47 Ned Kelly series at the Reed’s home ‘Heide’ an artistic Eden outside Melbourne. Sunday was intelligent, a modern thinker, well-read and a passionate gardener. She oversaw extensive tree and rose plantings at Heide in what would become a celebrated garden, based on the informal principles of the English garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. By the time of her death in 1981 much of Heide’s 15 acres was densely forested with exotic and native flora. Together the Reeds created a fertile creative space for many young painters and poets who together altered the course of Australia art in the 1930 and 40s. When the relationship broke down, Nolan left, leaving hundreds of his works (including the Kelly series) in the Reed’s care. Later he demanded their return. The Reeds agreed but refused to part with the Kelly paintings, seeing them as integral to the foundation collection of the proposed Heide Museum of Modern Art. The subsequent ownership dispute intensified the bitterness between them and the paintings were eventually gifted by the Reeds to the National Gallery of Australia in 1977.
Nolan’s monumental Paradise Garden, from which the present volume takes its name, comprises over 1320 images. It was was inspired by Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, Britten’s cantata after the English poet Christopher Smart’s poem Jubilate Agno, a hymn to God and his creations. Nolan first based the floral subjects on plants from his garden in Putney, west London, but later developed the work to include Australian wild flowers based on his memory of the desert of Central Australia in full flower after rain. A selection of these images are reproduced in the present volume. Painted over two years during 1968 and 1970, Paradise Garden was initially installed at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. It was later exhibited at the Tate in London, before Nolan gifted it to the Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne.
Nolan never commented publicly on the details of his relationship with the Reeds, however in discussing these late 1960s floral works he often alluded to the biblical themes of The Fall, The Temptation and The Expulsion – “like Milton” he once said, “I would like to inhabit Paradise.”
Title: Paradise Garden
Author: Sidney Nolan
Publisher: R. Alistair McAlpine Publishing Ltd., London
Publication Date: 1971
Edition: First edition. One of 2890 copies of the standard edition. There were also 110 copies bound as a deluxe edition and 20 copies with original drawings signed by the artist
Format: Hardcover in gilt-illustrated green cloth binding with double dust-jacket of paper and glassine
Pages: 110 pp
Condition: Very good
Stock Number: RB03687
A luxuriously produced volume of poetry by Sidney Nolan accompanied by full-page colour plates from a selection of Nolan’s Paradise Garden series paintings, interleaved with coloured crayon drawings printed on acetate overlays. The Paradise Garden poems were a response to Nolan’s complicated relationship with his early patrons, John and Sunday Reed, whom he had first met in 1938. Nolan entered into an affair with Sunday, during which time he painted his famed 1946-47 Ned Kelly series at the Reed’s home ‘Heide’ an artistic Eden outside Melbourne. Sunday was intelligent, a modern thinker, well-read and a passionate gardener. She oversaw extensive tree and rose plantings at Heide in what would become a celebrated garden, based on the informal principles of the English garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. By the time of her death in 1981 much of Heide’s 15 acres was densely forested with exotic and native flora. Together the Reeds created a fertile creative space for many young painters and poets who together altered the course of Australia art in the 1930 and 40s. When the relationship broke down, Nolan left, leaving hundreds of his works (including the Kelly series) in the Reed’s care. Later he demanded their return. The Reeds agreed but refused to part with the Kelly paintings, seeing them as integral to the foundation collection of the proposed Heide Museum of Modern Art. The subsequent ownership dispute intensified the bitterness between them and the paintings were eventually gifted by the Reeds to the National Gallery of Australia in 1977.
Nolan’s monumental Paradise Garden, from which the present volume takes its name, comprises over 1320 images. It was was inspired by Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, Britten’s cantata after the English poet Christopher Smart’s poem Jubilate Agno, a hymn to God and his creations. Nolan first based the floral subjects on plants from his garden in Putney, west London, but later developed the work to include Australian wild flowers based on his memory of the desert of Central Australia in full flower after rain. A selection of these images are reproduced in the present volume. Painted over two years during 1968 and 1970, Paradise Garden was initially installed at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. It was later exhibited at the Tate in London, before Nolan gifted it to the Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne.
Nolan never commented publicly on the details of his relationship with the Reeds, however in discussing these late 1960s floral works he often alluded to the biblical themes of The Fall, The Temptation and The Expulsion – “like Milton” he once said, “I would like to inhabit Paradise.”
