Study for ‘Mrs. Fraser’ c. 1966

Coloured crayons on card, 27 x 25.5 cm (image), 33 x 25 cm (sheet), signed in pencil centre right.

A study, or abstracted variation for the major the 1947 painting of Mrs Fraser, a theme Nolan would return to in the 1960s and 70s. ‘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’ (Paradise Garden, 1971, 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.