Tom Roberts | |
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.jpg) Roberts,c. 1895 | |
| Born | Thomas William Roberts 8 March 1856 (1856-03-08) Dorchester, Dorset, England |
| Died | 14 September 1931(1931-09-14) (aged 75) Kallista, Victoria, Australia |
| Resting place | Illawarra churchyard, nearLongford,Tasmania |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Spouses | |
Thomas William Roberts (8 March 1856 – 14 September 1931) was an English-born Australian artist and a key member of theHeidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism.
After studying inMelbourne, he travelled to Europe in 1881 to further his training, and returned home in 1885, "primed with whatever was the latest in art".[1] That year, he joinedFrederick McCubbin in founding theBox Hill artists' camp, the first of severalplein air camps frequented by members of the Heidelberg School. Together withArthur Streeton andCharles Conder, they staged the 18899 by 5 Impression Exhibition, Australia's first self-consciously avant-garde art exhibition.
Nicknamed "Bulldog" due to his tenacity and drive, Roberts was considered the primary force behind the Heidelberg School movement. He encouraged other artists to capture the national life of Australia, and while he is best known today for his "national narratives"—among themShearing the Rams (1890),A break away! (1891) andBailed Up (1895)—he earned a living as a society portraitist, and was the first person to push for Australia to have its ownNational Portrait Gallery. In 1903, he completed the commissioned workThe Big Picture, the most famous visual representation of thefirst Australian Parliament.
Roberts was born inDorchester,Dorset,England, although some mystery surrounds his actual birthdate: his birth certificate says 8 March 1856, whereas his tombstone is inscribed 9 March.[2]
Roberts migrated with his family to Australia in 1869 to live with relatives. Settling inCollingwood, a suburb ofMelbourne,Victoria, he worked as a photographer's assistant through the 1870s, while studying art at night under Swiss-born landscape painterLouis Buvelot and befriending others who were to become prominent artists, notablyFrederick McCubbin.
During this period, his mother had remarried to a man whom Roberts did not get along with. He decided to further his art studies, and returned to England for three years of full-time art study at theRoyal Academy Schools from 1881 to 1884. He traveled in Spain in 1883 with Australian artistJohn Russell and future politicianWilliam Maloney, where he met Spanish artistsLaureano Barrau andRamon Casas, who introduced him to the principles ofimpressionism andplein air painting.[2] While in London and Paris, he took in the progressing influence of paintersJules Bastien-Lepage andJames Abbott McNeill Whistler.[2]
From 1884 and through to February 1892,[3] Roberts worked again in Victoria, and became a prominent member of the bohemian artists' society theBuonarotti Club, adopting its habit of dress with a red satin lined opera cape and a 'crush topper,' though also advocating that professional artists be put in charge of the Club's exhibition activities; so instituted a selection panel of Frederick McCubbin,Louis Abrahams,John Mather,Jane Sutherland and himself, who would select and hang the works and provide exhibitors with constructive feedback.[4]
In the summer of 1885–86, Roberts began establishing "artists' camps" on the outskirts of Melbourne for the purpose of capturingen plein air the rural life and native bushland of Australia, as well as its light, heat, space and distance.[2] At the first of these camps, theBox Hill artists' camp (now in suburbanBox Hill) he initially worked alongside McCubbin and Abrahams before they were joined by other artists. TheBox Hill railway station had been completed only a few years earlier, allowing for convenient access to the Australian bush. The following summer, the trio established a second camp at baysideMentone, a popular holiday spot. OnMentone Beach, they met and befriended the youngArthur Streeton, who was then paintingen plein air. Streeton became a frequent visitor to the artists' camps and a protege of Roberts, who taught him impressionistic techniques. From 1888, Roberts rented a studio inGrosvenor Chambers, at 9Collins Street, Melbourne's first purpose-built complex of art studios. The architects consulted Roberts on the design of the building, to ensure ideal lighting. At Grosvenor Chambers, Roberts became one of Melbourne's most fashionable portraitists.[5]
Another meeting of importance was withCharles Conder, who Roberts befriended during a visit toSydney in 1888. They painteden plein air together, creating companion views ofCoogee Beach, and discussed impressionist techniques, which Conder had also picked up from expatriate artistG. P. Nerli. In October 1888, Conder followed Roberts to Melbourne, at first staying at his studio at Grosvenor Chambers.
During the summer of 1888–89, Roberts and Conder joined Streeton at hisHeidelberg artists' camp, and began organising an exhibition of "impressions" they painted upon wooden cigar box lids, supplied by Abrahams, manager of the cigar businessSniders & Abrahams. In doing so, the artists sought to capture the fleeting effects of nature in a spontaneous manner, and were intent on officially establishing themselves as "impressionists" and thus the vanguard of Australian art. The exhibition, named the9 by 5 Impression Exhibition (in reference to the 9 x 5 inch dimensions of the lids), was held in August and September of 1889, at Buxton's Rooms. Roberts was the main exhibitor with 63 "impressions", followed by Conder and Streeton. McCubbin andCharles Douglas Richardson also accepted invitations to join the exhibition. It proved to be asuccès de scandale, attracting scorn from a number of art critics, who dismissed impressionism as a fad. Today it is considered a landmark event in Australian art history, and the first independent exhibition of theHeidelberg School movement, named after the location of the aforementioned artists' camp. Due to his age, tenacity and influence, Roberts was considered the movement's de facto leader. Upon moving to Europe in 1890, Conder wrote to Roberts, saying, "If there is any distinct school in Melbourne, ... it's entirely due to you."[6]
When a severe economic depression hit Melbourne in 1890, Roberts and Streeton relocated to Sydney, where they continued to painten plein air at artists' camps, includingCurlew Camp andother camps aroundSydney Harbour. From Sydney, both artists travelled into the rural districts of New South Wales, where they painted most of their iconic "national" pictures. For Roberts, these themes were reinforced by his association with members of Sydney's nationalistBulletin School of literature, centered around the periodicalThe Bulletin.
In 1896, he married 36-year-old Elizabeth (Lillie) Williamson and they had a son,Caleb. Lillie Roberts was an expert maker of picture frames, and during the period 1903–1914, when Roberts painted relatively little, much of the family's income apparently came from Lillie's work. Roberts spentWorld War I in England assisting at a hospital. Back in Australia, he built a house atKallista, near Melbourne. Elizabeth died in January 1928, and Roberts remarried, to Jean Boyes, in August 1928. He died in 1931 of cancer in Kallista. His ashes are buried in the churchyard at Illawarra nearLongford,Tasmania, one of his favourite painting spots.
Roberts painted a considerable number of fine oil landscapes and portraits, some painted at artist camps with his friend McCubbin. Perhaps the most famous in his time were two large paintings,Shearing the Rams, now displayed in theNational Gallery of Victoria andThe Big Picture, displayed inParliament House, Canberra.The Big Picture, commissioned for a fee of one thousand guineas plus expenses[7] was a depiction of the first sitting of the Parliament of Australia in the Melbourne Exhibition Building and was an enormous work, notable for the event depicted as well as the quality of Roberts' work.
Shearing the Rams was based on a visit to asheep station atBrocklesby in southernNew South Wales, depicted thewool industry that had been Australia's first export industry and a staple of rural life. When it was first exhibited, there were immediately calls for the painting to enter a public gallery, with a Melbourne correspondent for theSydney press stating, "if our national gallery trustees were in the least patriotic, they would purchase it."[8] Some critics did not feel that it fitted the definition of 'high art'. However, since the wool industry was Australia's greatest export industry at the time, it was a theme with which many Australian people could identify. In this painting, as one modern reviewer has said, Roberts put his formal art training to work, translating "the classical statuary into the brawny workers of the shearing shed".[9]
Roberts made many other paintings showing country people working, with a similar image of the shearing sheds inThe Golden Fleece (1894),[10] adrover racing after sheep breaking away from the flock inA break away!, and with men chopping trees inWood splitters (1886). Many of Roberts' paintings were landscapes or ideas done on small canvases that he did very quickly, such as his show at the famous9 by 5 Impression Exhibition in Melbourne, "9 by 5" referring to the size in inches of thecigar box lids on which most of the paintings were done. Roberts had more works on display in this exhibition than anyone else.
In 1888 Roberts met Conder in Sydney and they painted together atCoogee beach. The younger Conder found these painting expeditions influential and decided to follow Roberts to Melbourne later that year to join him and Streeton at their artists' camp at Heidelberg. While Conder painted Coogee Bay emphasising on the decorative qualities of form and colour, Roberts'Holiday sketch at Coogee(1888) embodies his primary focus on the landscape's natural effects.[11] It is an early testament to Roberts' plein-air 'impressionist' technique, which brought out the sun's glare on the bright blue sea, bleached white sand, dry grass and spindly seaside vegetation.
Roberts' life was dramatised in the 1985 Australian mini seriesOne Summer Again.
A "lost" painting titledRejected was featured in a 2017 episode of the BBC seriesFake or Fortune?. It was determined by experts to be a genuine Roberts, dating from his student years in London. Roberts' granddaughter considered it a self-portrait. If so, it would make it his oldest surviving self-portrait.[12][13]
A retrospective toured Australia in 1996–97 and another was shown at theNational Gallery of Australia from December 2015 – March 2016.[9][14] Roberts was one of four Australian artists whose paintings featured in theAustralia’s Impressionists exhibition at theNational Gallery,London, which ran from December 2016 to March 2017; it was described as 'the first UK exhibition of its kind'.[15]
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