Ned Kelly

inscribed association copy

A wonderful association copy of this monograph on the Australian artist Sidney Nolan's acclaimed Ned Kelly series, presented to the composer Eric Walter White 'with best love from Dodo [his wife], Christmas, 1964', and further inscribed by Nolan to the half-title 'I didn't give it but I wish I had. Sidney'.

White (1905-1985) was the Arts Council's first literature director, as well as being a translator, editor, poet and author in his own right, notable for his works on the history of English opera, and his three biographies of the Russian composer Stravinsky.

'The names Ned Kelly and Sidney Nolan have become especially connected. As the pictorial biographer of Kelly, Nolan has recreated the myth and has captured its spirit in a convincing, timeless, legendary way. The first series of Kelly pictures was painted between 1945 and 1947. Each of the paintings represents a particular episode in the story. This book reproduces the complete series of 27 paintings in colour. The text is by Robert Melville who has drawn upon contemporary documents to relate the story in detail' (blurb).

First edition, first impression, inscribed by Sidney Nolan; small 4to (22 x 17 cm); gift inscription in pen to front free endpaper recto, inscribed by Sidney Nolan in pen to half-title, 27 colour plates; publisher's blue cloth, publisher's device in gilt to upper cover, spine lettered in gilt, original pictorial dust-jacket, price-clipped, extremities slightly rubbed; [6], 60pp.