Paradise Garden. Paintings, drawings and poems (deluxe edition, with original drawing)

With an introduction by Robert Melville. London: R Alistair McAlpine, 1971. Quarto, 110pp. comprised of poems by Sidney Nolan accompanied by full page plates with colour crayon acetate overlays. The rarest deluxe edition, in a batik cloth binding, signed by the artist, with an original signed drawing bound in. A total of 3000 copies were produced, 2890 standard editions (cloth bound with dustjacket), plus 110 deluxe copies bound in batik, of which 20 contained original Nolan drawings. This is copy number 14/20, signed by Nolan.Housed in a fine gilt-lettered buckram clamshell box.

The colour crayon drawing is an abstract version of the 1947 Mrs Fraser painting reproduced on page 5 of the book. ‘A female figure representing a certain Mrs Fraser … has the significance of a Muse, and if he had never created Ned Kelly … he could have rested his case with posterity on this strange and unforgettable image of a woman’ (page 7). The story of Eliza Anne Fraser (1798 – 1858), survivor of the shipwreck of the Stirling in 1836, was a source of fascination to Nolan. The mythology of her rescue and subsequent imprisonment by Aboriginal tribesmen near Moreton Bay, Queensland, influenced relations between black and white Australians in the nineteenth century, and along with the writings of Patrick White, Nolan’s important series on Mrs Fraser aided a revisionist understanding of the events of the legend.

The rarest Nolan book, only 20 copies made, including a crayon drawing of one of Nolan’s most significant subjects.