The Australian expressionist painter Sidney Robert Nolan (1917-1992) emerged in the 1940s as a leading figure among the artists then beginning to articulate Australians' newfound awareness of their environment.

Born in Melbourne on April 22, 1917, Sidney Nolan was the son of a tram driver. He attended public schools and at age 14 began studying design at a technical college. His early interest was poetry, and his first job was as a poster painter for a hat company. Nolan began formal training at the National Gallery of Victoria and quickly developed a distinctive figurative manner of painting.

In the late 1930s he began painting outback landscapes and urban scenes, experimenting widely and with great imaginative energy. He exhibited abstract paintings in his first one-man show, in Melbourne in 1940, but soon concentrated on impressionistic renderings of the outback, with outlaws and animals most prominent. Later he moved from this stream-of-consciousness outpouring of...