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In time, Nolan went abroad to find his people and became absorbed in classical mythology while living on the Greek island of Hydra. "I wanted to see if in painting non-Australian myths I could achieve the same relationship between landscape and figures," he says. Last June, in London's Matthiesen Gallery, he unveiled 75 new paintings that pursued the legend of Leda and the Swan against the background of the outback. They were a hit of the season in London.
Nolan explains his success by pointing out that storytelling is one of art's motive forces. The Observer's John Pringle is inclined to agree. "People are tired of abstract art," he says. "Nolan has gone back to telling a story. The important thing about him and the other Australian painters is that they have found their own national identity. Unlike painters in most new countries who are struggling for ways to express themselves, they don't have to ask 'How shall I be an Australian?' They are bloody Australians and they can't be anything else. They are becoming the Mediterraneans of the Anglo-Saxon world."