Sturt on the River Bank

The Irish ancestry of Sidney Nolan infused his imagination with the figure of Ned Kelly, while the spirit of explorers coursed equally strongly through his veins. His paintings of Central Australia, Africa and the Antarctic testify to this wanderlust—a lifelong search for the earth’s wonders to paint. From the epic Ned Kelly series of 1946–47 Nolan turned to the saga of Burke and Wills. Sturt on the River Bank (1948) stands as a prologue, the artist identifying his own actions with those of another great Australian explorer. When Nolan sold the painting in the 1980s he recalled it as the first work painted after his flight from Heide to Sydney and the north. The scene is believed to be on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River—Nolan’s own Rubicon to a new land and life—with the figure originally based on himself. Only later did the painting acquire the Sturt identification; both readings are plausible in this subtle interweaving of biography and myth.

In the image the solitary figure towers over the landscape, the trees at his feet reduced to twigs, the farm diminished by distance. The vast river and endless land set the stage for the artist-explorer depicted as conqueror. Charles Sturt, a leading figure in Australian inland exploration, searched the westward-flowing rivers for the fabled inland sea. His 1829 journey down the Murrumbidgee to the Murray, its junction with the Darling and on to Lake Alexandrina, and his epic row back against the current, embody the endurance Nolan invoked.