inscription lower right:
on our own it is far
too much for a ........(woman?)
and the (edge? sedge? rodge?) a ..........? whisper
Brother ocean, my can I ch......d fear

Provenance:
The Estate of Sir Sidney Nolan

Painted at a time of great upheaval; three years after he had left his wife and child for Heide, and whilst Nolan was serving in the army and considering desertion, Woman with a Child 1944 may be a sentimental remembrance of Nolan’s former, much simpler life with his first wife Elizabeth Patterson and their child Amelda. Nolan had lived with his young wife at Ocean Grove, just out of Melbourne, a home offered to them rent free for one year.

At the time Woman with a Child was painted Nolan’s “relationship with Elizabeth was becoming increasingly distant and although he was delighted at the birth of their daughter he was an increasingly errant husband and father.”1

As Rosenthal observes, the same compositional arrangement is employed later in Mrs Reardon at Glenrowan 1946 in which mother and child “are modelled, according to Mary Nolan, on his first wife Elizabeth and their daughter Amelda.”2 The protective mother is shown clutching the small child as she flees from the burning Glenrowan Hotel.
RM

1 Adams, B., Sidney Nolan: Such is Life, Hutchinson, London, 1987, p.52.
2 Rosenthal, T.G., Sidney Nolan, Thames and Hudson, London, 2002, p.78.