Chinese landscape

'I have found that having looked at Chinese paintings a lot, it didn't really make sense to me until I had been there and seen and felt those misty voids ... and this whole idea of nature represrenting the fundamental philosophy of life.' (N. Underhill (ed.), Nolan on Nolan, Sidney Nolan in his own words, London, 2007, pp.286-7)

Nolan visited China for the first time in 1965, and made numerous visits in the 1970s and 1980s, his Chinese landscapes, including nine paintings from his Kuei River journey of 1979, shown at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, in 1981 (Sidney Nolan In China) to accompany the touring exhibition from the People's Republic of China (Chinese Paintings of the Ming and Qing Dynasties). A commission followed from Hong Kong Land to paint a series of works for their lobby in Exchange Square, Hong Kong, and fourteen large Chinese landscapes based on his 1983 visit were acquired by Hong Kong Land in 1984. The present large canvas is from the same series, and uses the same innovative combination of acrylic and lacquer spray paint to pictures which, however differently conceived, resonate in subject and their fluent hand with the work of great Chinese classical landscape painters.