There were many factors that led Nolan to Kelly. As a boy, Nolan absorbed firsthand stories about Kelly from his grandfather who was a policeman in Kelly’s day (Underhill 2007, p. 271). This special kind of access put Nolan close to Kelly. It meant Kelly was not just part of his collective memory as an Australian, but also part of his personal memory. He describes knowledge of Kelly as “an organic thing I grew up with” (Nolan in Underhill 2007, p. 265). Both men were born in Australia but had a strong sense of Irish heritage.48
Even though Nolan was a sixth generation Australian, his family were proud to promote their Irish roots (Kennedy in Nolan, Bail & Sayers 2002, p. iv). Nolan confessed in 1985, “I feel quite Irish in temperament” (Nolan in Underhill
48 Ned’s father Red Kelly had grown up in Tipperary, Ireland, but had been sent to Van
Diemen’s Land for stealing two pigs (see Molony 2002, p. 7; Smith 2003, p. 22). Nolan’s parents were also born in Australia but were proud of their Irish heritage.
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2007, p. 302). As an Irish-Australian, I propose that Kelly represented the kind of identity Nolan sought. Nolan admired the way Irish Kelly became Australian through bonding with the land.
Kelly’s Irish heritage is partly responsible for his notoriety as the Irish patriotism of Kelly’s family was not appreciated by the British government officials (see Kenneally 1955, p. 23). With fiery Irish blood coursing through his veins, Kelly collided headfirst with the police. After one too many incidents,49 Kelly and some of his family and friends ended up on the run as
wanted criminals. Kelly was unlike other bushrangers50 in that he attempted to
justify his actions in detailed, passionately voiced letters. In the nineteenth century there were mixed feelings towards Kelly but, overall, the illustrated press51 presented him in a sympathetic light.52 Kelly was generally presented in
accord with what Graham Seal identifies as the key characteristics of outlaws in mythology: “friend of the poor, oppressed, forced into outlawry, brave, generous, courteous, does not indulge in unjustified violence, trickster, betrayed, lives on after death” (Seal cited in Tranter & Donoghue 2008, p. 374). Coupled with the fact that the police at the time were often seen as
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Kelly was arrested several times: for being associated with bushranger Harry Power in 1870, for receiving a stolen horse in 1871 and for drunk and di sorderly behaviour and assaulting a policeman in 1877. The major incident that triggered Ned Kelly’s notoriety began in April 1878 when a drunken Constable Fitzpatrick visited the Kelly residence and allegedly made advances towards Ned’s sister, Kate Kelly. The scene turned violent. Fitzpatrick claimed Ned Kelly shot at him three times and that one bullet scraped his wrist; the Kellys claimed Fitzpatrick accidently bumped and scratched his wrist on something sharp (see Smith 2003, pp. 48-64). The different accounts of how the event unfolded, the Kellys and Fitzpatrick’s, exacerbated the conflict between the police and the Kellys.
50 Such as John Caesar, Martin Cash and Jack Donohoe. The term ‘bushrangers’ to
describe Australian outlaws was common since 1805 (Tranter & Donoghue 2008, pp. 373-74). Ned Kelly, however, became the ultimate bushranger, “the end as well as the symbol of the tradition” (Hodge & Mishra 1991, p. 131).
51 The illustrated press included The Illustrated Australian News (1862-1896); The Illustrated Sydney News (1853-1884); Australasian Sketcher (1873-1889); TheSydney Mail (1860-93);
The Australian Pictorial Weekly (June 1880–July 1880) and The Bulletin (1880-2008).
52 For more on these illustrations, see ‘The Art of Engraving: Images of Ned Kelly and
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tyrants, this led Kelly to be mythologised as someone who reluctantly became an outlaw. He allegedly did so not only for his own family but for all struggling Irish families in the region, and by extension, all those who felt oppressed. Kelly has thus been likened to Robin Hood and Jesse James. Nolan saw Kelly in a similar light as a man who stood up for himself, his friends and family (Sayers 1994, p. 9; Underhill 2007, p. 271).
Nolan found Kelly’s life captivating. He read J. J. Kenneally’s The Complete Inner History of the Kelly Gang (first published in March 1929), contemporary newspaper reports, the Royal Commissioners Report, as well as Kelly’s epic letters: the Cameron Letter and the Jerilderie Letter.53
In a statement about his first Kelly series, Nolan quoted a section of the Cameron Letter that revealed Kelly’s insistence that he was a forced outlaw: “… if my people do not get justice … I shall be forced to seek revenge …” (Nolan 1948, p. 20). When Nolan was researching Kelly in the 1940s, two writers, Douglas Stewart and Max Brown, also tapped in to the legend of Ned Kelly. Stewart’s play Ned Kelly54 presented Kelly in a heroic light as someone who embodied the Australian character (Webb 2003). Brown’s book, Australian Son: The Story of Ned Kelly, by contrast, was original in its distanced approach; it was neither for nor against Kelly as most previous books had been (Iron Outlaw
53 The Cameron Letter was Ned Kelly’s attempt to explain his actions to Donald Cameron, a
member of the Legislative Assembly who was sympathetic towards the problems amongst settlers in Victoria. It was posted from Glenrowan to Cameron in 1878 (see Innes 2008, pp. 46- 50 which includes a copy of the letter). The Jerilderie Letter refers to a fifty-six page statement by Kelly justifying his actions in 1879. Both letters were dictated by Kelly and written by Joe Byrne. Kelly hoped the Jerilderie Letter would be published but it took another fifty years for this to happen (for more information on the Jerilderie Letter see Innes 2008, pp. 51-4; National Museum of Australia). In 1967 Nolan produced a set of lithographs based on the Jerilderie Letter (Rosenthal 2002, p. 289).
54 In 1956 Nolan, who immensely enjoyed the theatre, painted backdrops for Stewart’s play in
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2011). However, Nolan had already formulated his ideas about Kelly and did not draw on Brown’s new research.
As well as researching secondary sources, Nolan was drawn to the physical artefacts of Kelly. When Nolan was growing up, Kelly’s armour was on public display at the Melbourne Aquarium. “It is really one of my earliest memories – like the sea, or the smell of a eucalyptus tree”, Nolan said of the armour (Underhill 2007, p. 265). Being able to study the armour firsthand no doubt would have excited and inspired him. Another encounter with a tangible remnant of Kelly was his death mask and what was believed to be his skull,55
which were on public display at the Melbourne Gaol until 1978. Nolan used the death mask as source material.56 This, along with the studio photographic
portrait of Kelly the day before he was hanged taken by Charles Nettleton and other portraits from the illustrated press, assisted Nolan in painting some portraits of Kelly without the helmet.57
Nolan felt as if he could identify with the violence of Kelly’s life through his own wartime experiences. He did not see live action in the war but was still affected by guns and the chronic reports of bloodshed in the 1940s. His brother Raymond, who was a soldier, died tragically in an accident just before the end of World War II.58 While a deliberation on war and violence is
most evident in Nolan’s Gallipoli series, which began in 1955, it is also an integral part of some of the Kelly paintings. Reflecting on his experiences with army training, Nolan explained: “I sought an individual like Kelly who … was
55 It is now known that this was not the skull of Ned Kelly (AAP 2011; Ciallella 2011). 56 Now in the collection of the National Museum of Australia, the mask was previously in the
possession of Australian artist Max Meldrum. Nolan based Death of a Poet (1954) on Kelly’s
death mask.
57 For example, Ned Kelly (1946).
58 Raymond Nolan accidently drowned in Cooktown while waiting to be released from the
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a real individual whose life was full of violence which was expiated at the end of a rope …” (Nolan cited in Lynn, Nolan & Semler 1985, p. 7).