Searching for hidden figures in Sidney Nolan’s paintings at the Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG) with paintings conservator Dr Celia Cramer. Photo: Dom Northcott.
So, we might never get to the bottom of where exactly the Earthwork sculpture is buried in Canberra’s Commonwealth Park, but we are about to learn all the secrets about another Australian artist.
For a long time, it’s been rumoured that Sidney Nolan, most famous for his Ned Kelly series, hid figures and inscriptions beneath his oil paintings.
“Before he died, Nolan gave an interview where he said there was a Luna Park painting underneath Kelly and Horse, and we were like ‘that’s interesting’, but we weren’t too excited about it initially,” independent paintings conservator Dr Celia Cramer says.
“But then when we looked closer at the painting, and in the right bottom corner, you can make out two legs, a squarish body and a square helmet.”
Could it be an original painting of Ned Kelly at Melbourne’s Luna Park? Whatever the truth, it’s about to come to light.
Specialist infrared and X-ray equipment will be brought into the Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG) in Civic next week to scan at least four of Nolan’s works for what may lie beneath, and the public will be invited to watch it happen in real time.
Could this be an earlier painting of Ned Kelly at Melbourne’s Luna Park? Photo: Dom Northcott.
“They’ll come in here, to the exhibition space, and see a whole bunch of nerds with some instruments and artworks, but we’re also going to have a screen up on the wall, showing in real time as the equipment reveals what’s underneath.”
Among the works under investigation are Kelly and Sgt Kennedy (1946), thought to contain buried newspaper clippings, and Kelly and Horse (1946), which may conceal earlier versions of the outlaw.
Kelly and the Horse (1946) is also on the list of paintings to inspect. Photo: Dom Northcott.
“The technique we’re going to use is called ‘infrared reflectography’, which is a fancy and intimidating term for effectively the same light source used in hospitals, when the nurse clips the thing on your finger to tell your heart rate,” Dr Cramer says.
“It penetrates the paint … and bounces back off the under layers, going little by little left to right. It takes approximately four hours to complete a large painting. And the software stitches it together so we can actually see the full picture of what’s underneath.”
The tech struggles with black paint, which is where the heavy-duty X-ray will come in – to fill in the gaps.
“And the best thing about this collection is that it hasn’t been mucked around with. It hasn’t been restored too much. It hasn’t been varnished. It’s pretty close to the way it was when it left Nolan’s hands.”
Even Nolan’s Carcass (1953) could be hiding something. Photo: Dom Northcott.
Sidney Nolan was born in Carlton, Melbourne, in 1917 and died in London in 1992, at the age of 75. His works featuring Ned Kelly are thought to be inspired by the time he fled from conscription during World War II, hiding at a rural friend’s house and changing his name to ‘Robin Murray’.
CMAG has custody of over 218 of Nolan’s works, donated in March 1975 to the “Australian people”. Others are kept by the National Gallery of Australia.
This year, CMAG started a 12-month-long conservation effort to analyse and repair the paintings, cleaning the surfaces and fabricating new brass frames along the way.
All up, Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG) looks after 218 of Nolan’s works. Photo: Dom Northcott.
The detective work comes courtesy of funding from the ACT Government and Sydney University, with a bit also thrown in from Dr Cramer’s own bank account. Even then, most of the work will be done by volunteers.
“I had to do five years of PhD to get the skills to do this,” Dr Cramer says.
“We first talked about it during a conference in 2015 … but all the stars have aligned to make this work happen now … At some stage in the future we’ll get hopefully another opportunity to do it again in a more thorough way, but this is kind of just satisfying the immediate desire to find out more and do something no one’s done before.”
Timed public sessions will run every half hour between 10:30 am and 5 pm, on 14 and 15 October, with CMAG staff on hand to guide audiences through the process. Entry costs $5 per person. Book on the CMAG website.
