The mythology of Ned Kelly by Sidney Nolan

When the state government of Victoria announced last year that it would, belatedly, grant Ned Kelly’s dying wish and hand over his remains to his family for burial, it was the latest in a long line of official steps towards the Australian bush ranger's rehabilitation.

Kelly was found guilty of murdering three Victoria policemen in 1880, and was duly executed and decapitated for his crimes. As a sign of how his reputation has improved in recent years, however, in 2009 various skeletons were exhumed from a mass grave at Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison, and Kelly’s own remains (minus his head) were identified – to major fanfare – through DNA analysis.

Ned Kelly before his death in 1880

One hundred and thirty-two years on, the outlaw’s deeds have passed into legend, and he’s now fondly remembered as Australia’s answer to Robin Hood, an Irish convict-immigrant’s son unjustly treated by the British colonial establishment.

His tale has inspired novels, operas, ballets and various films (perhaps most idiosyncratically that starring Mick Jagger in 1970; most recently that starring Heath Ledger in 2003). And if the 1879 play Catching The Kellys is anything to go by – written and performed while Ned’s gang was still at large – it appears Kelly had become a folk hero, and his life-story begun to be mythologised, even during his own lifetime.

Sidney Nolan, First-class Marksman (1946)

The most famous artistic take on his exploits came courtesy of Sidney Nolan. The Melbourne artist returned to Kelly again and again throughout his career, but it was his 1946-47 series that’s generally acknowledged as his finest – that’s generally acknowledged, indeed, as the defining breakthrough in Australian modernism. One of its 27 paintings, First Class Marksman, became Australia’s most expensive ever artwork in 2010, when it sold for $5.4 million. His Ned Kelly paintings now have a new permanent home at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Drawing of Ned Kelly wearing his recognisable helmet

At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, figures in costumes based on Nolan’s vision of Kelly even performed at the opening ceremony, as part of Australia’s carefully choreographed, cultural showcase to the world. This served not only as further confirmation of Aussie officialdom’s new-found approval of Kelly; but also as a sign that our image of Kelly today has, in many ways, become the one Nolan painted of him.

Characters at the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony inspired by Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly

Nolan’s Ned is distinguished by the black-square helmet he often wore, its tiny post-box slit at eye-level being our only psychological access to him. The artist was openly inspired by the geometric abstractions of Suprematism, Malevich’s black square in particular, though you don’t need a degree in art history to appreciate Nolan’s trademark motif.

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square (1915)

Kelly’s impenetrable headgear has become iconic, an instantly recognisable symptom of his outsider status and anti-heroism. Occasionally, even his eyes are missing and the slit is left empty, the latter serving merely as a second frame for the Australian landscape in the distance. The picture qualities in the series are naive and uncomplicated, qualities Nolan admired in the art of French hero of the avant-garde Henri Rousseau. As a young artist Nolan was passionate about French culture from the poetry of Verlaine and Rimbaud to the paintings of Cezanne and Picasso.

Nolan insisted that the Kelly paintings were more than the story of a bush ranger, saying that an understanding of landscape was key to the series. "I find the desire to paint the landscape involves a wish to hear more of the stories that take place in the landscape," he said. "To find expression in such household sayings as 'game as Ned Kelly'." Nolan seems, with considerable cuteness, to be implying that, because of all the tellings, re-tellings and distortions of his story down the years, the real Kelly is now utterly unknowable. He is nothing more than a helmet-shaped, black hole of accumulated tales.

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