''Daisy Bates at Ooldea'' is a painting by
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
n artist
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 ...
, completed in
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
in 1950 after Nolan, his wife Cynthia and stepdaughter Jinx visited the small
South Australian settlement of
Ooldea during their travels in
Central Australia
Central Australia, also sometimes referred to as the Red Centre, is an inexactly defined region associated with the geographic centre of Australia. In its narrowest sense it describes a region that is limited to the town of Alice Springs and i ...
. The painting shows
Irish Australian anthropologist
Daisy Bates (1859–1951) standing alone in stark, barren landscape. Bates became famous for spending most of her later years living among Aboriginal tribes in the
outback
The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a n ...
, including sixteen years at Ooldea.
''Daisy Bates at Ooldea'' was acquired by the
National Gallery of Australia in 1987. It was included in the 2000 international exhibition ''
Painting the Century: 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900–2000'', held at the
National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to:
*National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra
*National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred
*National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C.
*National Portrait Gallery, London, with s ...
in
London.
[ Warwick Gibson, Robin. ''Painting the Century: 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000''. London: National Portrait Gallery, 2000. , p. 160]
References
External links
''Daisy Bates at Ooldea''— National Gallery of Australia collection
Paintings by Sidney Nolan
1950 paintings
Collection of the National Gallery of Australia
Portraits
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