Violet Cynthia Reed Nolan (1908–1976) was an Australian writer and
gallerist
An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells Work of art, works of art, or acts as the intermediary between the buyers and sellers of art.
An art dealer in contemporary art typically seeks out various artists to represent, and build ...
who promoted modern art and design in Australia during the early to mid 1930s. She was a key member of the
Heide Circle
The Heide Circle was a loose grouping of Australian artists who lived and worked at "Heide", a former dairy farm on the Yarra River floodplain at Bulleen, a suburb of Melbourne, counting amongst their number many of Australia's best-known modernis ...
around Sunday and
John Reed. Later she was based in London, but travelled widely. Although she and sister in law
Sunday Reed
Sunday Reed (born Lelda Sunday Baillieu) (15 October 190515 December 1981) was an Australian patron of the arts. Along with her husband, Reed established what is now the Heide Museum of Modern Art.
Personal life
Reed was born on 15 October 1905 ...
had a bitter split after Cynthia Reed and
Sidney Nolan
Sir Sidney Robert Nolan (22 April 191728 November 1992) was one of Australia's leading artists of the 20th century. Working in a wide variety of mediums, his oeuvre is among the most diverse and prolific in all of modern art. He is best known ...
married in 1948, John Reed described her on her death in 1976 as “Sunday's best friend”
In the later 20th century, Reed Nolan was mostly remembered as the cause of the high-profile public feud between her husband and Australian author
Patrick White
Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was a British-born Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from 1935 to 1987.
White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, ...
.
Early life
Born into a wealthy, landed family at Mount Pleasant, outside of
Launceston, Tasmania, Cynthia Reed's childhood and adolescence was materially secure, but she found the
evangelical Christianity
Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide Interdenominationalism, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being "bor ...
and
patriarchal
Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of Dominance hierarchy, dominance and Social privilege, privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical Anthropology, anthropological term for families or clans controll ...
sternness of her family life highly disturbing. Themes of childhood alienation are threaded through her fiction, informed by her experience of psychoanalysis and reading of Freudian theory and textbooks. After some years as a boarder at the Hermitage Girls' School, Geelong she lived with her sister Dr Margaret Reed in Melbourne. An affair with orchestral conductor
Bernard Heinze
Sir Bernard Thomas Heinze, AC (1 July 189410 June 1982) was an Australian conductor, academic, and Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music.
He conducted all the orchestras run by the ABC, most particularly the Melbourne Sym ...
during the late 1920s expanded her cultural and intellectual milieu, and she moved in a group of avant garde artists and patrons in Melbourne centred around her brother John Reed. Both Cynthia and Sunday Reed had affairs with Heinze in the late 1920s that broke up unhappily and Reed-Nolan entered her first session of psychoanalysis.
Reed Nolan travelled overseas in 1929, seeking out contemporary theatre, art, design and music in London and then moved to Europe, staying with well-off families in Germany and Austria, including in Konigsberg East Prussia, Berlin and Vienna. Because she moved among Jewish intellectuals, she discussed the Weimar Republic's rising Antisemitism in letters home to Australia.
Returning to Australia by 1931, she spent time in Sydney with
Mark Anthony Bracegirdle
:''This article refers to the political activist. For the Rear Admiral see Leighton Seymour Bracegirdle. For the fictional family of Hobbits see Bracegirdle.''
Mark Anthony Lyster Bracegirdle (10 September 1912 – 22 June 1999) was a British-born ...
and his family, who introduced Reed-Nolan to radical politics. She. in turn, influenced John Reed's uptake of communist ideas at this date. However Melbourne, where she was treated as a celebrity in the social pages of the local newspapers, became the site of her greatest success. She was the only bridesmaid at John and Sunday's wedding in January 1932 and the three lived together for some time in South Yarra, before John and Sunday moved to Heide, establishing the repeated pattern of the married couple needing close emotional investment with a third party to form a triangulated family unit. Amongst the Heide circle, Reed-Nolan's first hand experience of international contemporary art and design stood out and enriched those who had not left Australia. Although later estranged, Sunday and Cynthia Reed shared many tastes and habits in common and constantly exchanged letters and gifts such as clothing or seeds and plants for the Heide garden.
Business
In late 1932, Reed-Nolan began mounting exhibitions in the furniture shop established by Frederick Ward, who had shared a house with her brother John in the 1920s. Artists ranging from
Thea Proctor
Thea may refer to:
* Thea (name), a given name
* Ancient Greek term for goddess, including an alternative spelling of Theia
* ''Thea'', the former name of the tea plant genus, now included in ''Camellia''
* Thea, a village in the municipal unit Mes ...
to
Ian Fairweather
Ian Fairweather (29 September 189120 May 1974) was a Scottish painter resident in Australia for much of his life. He combined western and Asian influences in his work.
Life
Ian Fairweather was born in Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire, Scotland in ...
were presented at her gallery. The display of
Sam Atyeo
Samuel Laurence Atyeo (6 January 1910 – 26 May 1990) was an Australian painter, designer and diplomat.
Atyeo was active in Melbourne's modernist movement in the 1930s and was associated with the Heide circle. He later had a diplomatic career ...
's disqualified entrant in the 1932 National Gallery of Victoria Travelling Scholarship in the front window of Reed-Nolan's Collins Street shop attracted much attention protested the official censorship of artistic innovation by Australian art museums and government art schools and established Reed Nolan as a leading modernist advocate. She later moved from Ward's former premises to an address in Little Collins Street Her business offered modernist interior design services to clients, with furniture by Ward and Atyeo, fabrics by
Michael O'Connell and wallpapers imported from Germany. Reed-Nolan herself designed at least one piece of furniture. Another high profile opportunity was providing the furniture and accessories for
Alleyne Clarice Zander's 1933 exhibition of British Modern Art in the Herald Building. Young Melbourne artists including
Moya Dyring
Moya Dyring (10 February 1909 – 4 January 1967) was an Australian artist. She was one of the first women artists to embrace Modernism and exhibit cubist paintings in Melbourne. For several years she was a member of the modern art community ...
were employed to paint contemporary murals on commissions organised by Reed Nolan. Her business was one of the most high-profiled conduits for promoting modern art and design in 1930s Australia and brought her in contact with many art patrons including
Maie Casey and
Mary Alice Evatt, who became longstanding friends.
Film and nursing career
By 1935, she had left the gallery and moved to Sydney, where she adopted the pseudonym, Miss Liesl Fels, and studied contemporary European style dance. At the same time she took an unsuccessful screen test with
Ken G. Hall
Kenneth George Hall, AO, OBE (22 February 1901 – 8 February 1994), better known as Ken G. Hall, was an Australian film producer and director, considered one of the most important figures in the history of the Australian film industry. ...
's
Cinesound
Cinesound Productions Pty Ltd was an Australian feature film production company, established in June 1931, Cinesound developed out of a group of companies centred on Greater Union Theatres, that covered all facets of the film process, from produ ...
Studio, having sought auditions in London in 1929, and apparently was cast in a large scale
Pat Hanna
George Patrick "Pat" Hanna (born 18 March 1888 in Whitianga, New Zealand – 24 October 1973 in Ampthill, Bedfordshire, England) was a New Zealand-born film producer, he was a soldier of the First World War who entertained post-war audience ...
production in Melbourne, that began filming, but was left uncompleted when Hanna left
Frank W, Thring's company. In 1936 she left Sydney by passenger ship in the company of a visiting American theatre producer, whom she named in letters to John and Sunday Reed as Michael, without identifying him further The couple separated in Hollywood, where Reed Nolan stayed for six months, again seeking to break into film acting. At this time she underwent a number of medical procedures, including aesthetic dentistry and a double mastectomy. However she also abandoned her desire to become a film star, in order to enroll in nursing training in Chicago, but was forced to leave within six months due to United States immigration law and she continued her training at
St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS teaching hospital in Central London, England. It is one of the institutions that compose the King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre. Administratively part of the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foun ...
London. She remained in contact with Australian expatriates including Clarice Zander and Sam Atyeo. At the outbreak of World War Two, she was working at the American Hospital in Paris and moved to New York, where she studied psychiatric nursing at the
Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic
The Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic (PWC) was a hospital in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, which was founded by an endowment bestowed by Payne Whitney (March 20, 1876 – May 25, 1927) upon his death. Whitney was an American ...
, but returned to Melbourne when she discovered that she was pregnant. Sunday Reed wished to adopt the child, prompting Reed Nolan's return to Sydney with her infant daughter in 1941 where she established a home in then rural
Wahroonga
Wahroonga is a suburb in the North Shore (Sydney)#Upper North Shore, Upper North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, 18 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the Local government in Australia ...
.
Marriage to Sidney Nolan and later career
During the 1940s, Reed-Nolan concentrated on writing novels, producing two autobiographical novels, ''Lucky Alphonse'', 1944 and ''Daddy Sowed A Wind!'' 1947 in a highly modernist style, unlike the social realism that was the norm in Australian literary fiction. The first was mildly well received. In March 1948 she married artist Sydney Nolan, who had left the Reed household at Heide, after a brief 3 month courtship. Almost immediately Reed-Nolan's network of contacts within both art circles and high society in New South Wales established Sydney Nolan as a prominent and successful artist and his reputation grew rapidly, even more than under John and Sunday Reed's promotion. Reed Nolan's previous talent as a gallerist was now devoted to Nolan alone. Of their marriage M.E.McGuire wrote "They were constant companions, their lives and works so intertwined as to be interchangeable", and Underhill wrote "
idney Nolanachieved a settled home life. Cynthia gained a partner and a cause. Above all, they considered each other intellectual equals, respecting and supporting their individual work habits."
In 1952, the Nolans left Australia, and rented accommodation in Britain, interspersed with extended international travel, until they bought a home in
Putney, London in 1960. Reed Nolan authored a number of travel books based upon the lengthy journeys undertaken by her husband to various countries, often displaying early awareness of Postcolonial themes and illustrated by her husband. Reed Nolan undertook much of the work of promoting and organising her husband's exhibitions. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Reed Nolan knew many of the most significant creative talents in Britain, counting figures such as
Kenneth Clark
Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television ...
and
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
among her acquaintances. During two years in the United States 1958-9, when her husband was awarded a Harkness Fellowship, Reed Nolan was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which was successfully cured in New York. Much of her previous poor health could be accounted by this long term undiagnosed illness. However the later 1960s and 1970s were marked by tensions in her marriage whilst her psychiatric health grew increasingly fragile. Nevertheless she made meticulous preparations for the organisation and disposal of her estate, which included papers and artworks, before taking an intentional overdose of sleeping pills in a London hotel on 24 November 1976.
Later impact
Reed Nolan was increasingly forgotten until Patrick White's autobiography
Flaws in the Glass
''Flaws in the Glass'' is Australian writer Patrick White
Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was a British-born Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from ...
, which presented an extended description of her character and achievements and equally a savage attack upon both her husband and the jealousies and hostilities directed towards her by mediocre Australian contemporaries. This passage, which provided the first high-profiled documentation that she had taken her own life, prompted a massive public feud between White and Nolan. In 1994 an anthology of her travel writings, ''Outback and Beyond'',
with some excisions of her more unconventional and political content was published.
Two scholars collected first hand accounts from surviving relatives, friends and colleagues in the 1990s, presented in a PhD in 2002 by Grant, and a biography in 2016 by McGuire.
Nancy Underhill in her biography of Sidney Nolan established the case for Reed Nolan's importance as a foundation of the Heide mythology, and the manager of her husband's career.
References
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Reed Nolan, Cynthia
Australian women writers
Australian writers
Australian art dealers
1908 births
1976 deaths
20th-century Australian women
Drug-related suicides in England
People from Tasmania