Sidney Nolan / Australia/England 1917–1992 / Mrs Fraser 1947 / Ripolin enamel on hardboard / 66.2 x 107cm / Purchased 1995 with a special allocation from the Queensland Government. Celebrating the Queensland Art Gallery’s Centenary 1895–1995 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art /  © Courtesy of the Artist’s Estate / www.bridgeman.co.uk

Sidney Nolan
Mrs Fraser 1947

Not Currently on Display

During a visit to the John Oxley Library in Brisbane in 1947, Sidney Nolan became intrigued by the story and mythology of Englishwoman Eliza Fraser.

Eliza was on board her husband’s brig, the Stirling Castle, when it was shipwrecked off the Queensland coast in 1836. The survivors, including Eliza and her husband James, were washed ashore on Fraser Island, the country of the Badtjala people. History records her capture by local Aborigines, who speared her husband, and tells of her rescue six weeks later by the convict John Graham. Fraser’s stories of brutish savages without culture is contested by many who recognise her accounts as critical to the brutal suffering incurred by the Badtjala people, who are said to have saved her from certain death.

Eliza Fraser’s traumatic tale, along with her controversial return to England, appealed to Nolan’s preoccupation with the archetype of an outsider in a hostile environment. Mrs Fraser 1947 is a confronting composition that echoes the oval framing of a genteel Victorian photographic portrait turned on its side to reveal an animalistic representation of a naked female form in the unforgiving landscape of the tropics.

Born in 1917, Sidney Nolan lived with his family in an Irish-Australian enclave in Melbourne. After leaving school, he began a part-time art correspondence course, and in 1934, he attended evening drawing classes at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School.

Nolan believed that the emotional potency of mythology can add resonance to the facts of history. Across his body of work, he experimented with size and technique, returning to the formal task of positioning a focal subject within a context and in front of a background.

His first solo exhibition, a series of abstracts and collages, was held in 1940. Between 1942 and 1945, Nolan served in the Australian Army, guarding stores in western Victoria, where he began painting outback landscapes.

He first depicted bushranger Ned Kelly in early 1945. The following year, he was discharged in absentia after failing to return to service following a month’s leave. Nolan ventured to Queensland in July 1947, spending several weeks visiting Brisbane and Fraser Island.

In 1950, he left for England, and in 1957, he was recognised with a retrospective at London’s Whitechapel Gallery. Nolan had more than 70 solo exhibitions and was knighted in 1981.

Discussion Questions

Imagine you were Eliza Fraser, shipwrecked and alone. What does this painting reveal about the experience of being lost, alone and trying to survive?

Classroom Activities

Write an adventure novel from the point of view of convict John Graham to tell the story of Eliza Fraser’s rescue.