Such is life. Those are, reputedly, the words uttered by the Australian folk hero Ned Kelly when he was sentenced to death in 1880 for a list of violent crimes that we don’t have space for here. When he was caught, after being shot in the legs, Kelly was wearing a home-made suit of armour constructed from ploughshares, including a cylindrical helmet with a slit for the eyes. The images created of Kelly — with his unmistakable block head — by the Australian artist Sidney Nolan are what brought the painter success and remain his most popular body of work.
Although less dramatic than Kelly’s, Nolan’s life was also eventful — the director Catherine Hunter’s 2009 documentary film about him, Mask and Memory, calls it “one…
