The Slip, 1947

Sidney Nolan, The slip 1947, enamel paint on composition board, © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Gift of Sunday Reed 1977

Humphrey Ocean is an artist and a Royal Academician

"This is something painting can do. It defies time and I can go on looking at it. Of course, there are a number of tensions, one of them being graphic. It is late evening, certainly the last knockings of the day. There is still sufficient light for the horse to be illuminated while the thoughts of the people climbing the hill are given the privacy of darkness. We as fellow onlookers are among them. There is very little to be said. It is a beautiful image. I should add it is done in household Ripolin, as all his paintings of this period were, Nolan’s resonant way of saying he was Australian and doing something new."