Sir Sidney Robert Nolan, O.M., R.A. (1917-1992)

Patrick White's The Aunt's Story was first published (by Routledge, & Kegan Paul) in 1948. It was White's third novel, written after his demobilisation at the end of the war, and the first to feature the work of a contemporary Australian artist (Roy de Maistre, White's early mentor, with whom he had shared a flat in London in 1938) on the dustjacket. The Nolans met White in the 1950s and became great friends, until the ugly and terminal spat which followed Cynthia Nolan's suicide in 1976. From the late 1950s Nolan produced a number of designs for White's novels' dustjackets, the first for Voss in 1957, and a head in profile for the second edition of The Aunt's Story published by Eyre and Spottiswoode (London, 1958). The present design, apparently unused, may have been executed in preparation for the 1963 Penguin edition.