Buy Tom Roberts Painting Shearing the Rams Artwork Reproduction!
Tom Roberts Paintings - Australia’s most Famous Impressionist Painter?
The famous artist Tom Roberts, whose ‘Shearing the Rams’ oil painting captured Australia’s imagination, was our foremost impressionist painter.
Interesting facts about Tom Roberts:
- At the time of his famous ‘Mentone’ and ‘Bourke Street’ paintings he occupied a small studio now occupied by the Myer Emporium.
- He was born in Great Britain 1856 and only came to Australia in 1859
- Frederick McCubbin was a great friend and fellow famous artist
- He stayed at the same artist camp as Arthur Streeton, in Box Hill, Melbourne
- His most famous painting Shearing the Rams is currently on display at the NGV (National Gallery of Victoria)
Shearing the Rams, based on a visit to a sheep station (large farm) at Brocklesby in southern New South Wales, depicted the wool industry that had been Australia’s first export industry and a staple of rural life. At the time it was exhibited, it was criticised because many 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 which many Australian people could identify with. The painting showed a view of the shearing sheds which was not in some cases realistic. Shearing would probably have been much messier; for instance the shearer on the left has picked the ram up to move it, when normally it would have been dragged backwards.
A number of Tom Roberts’ paintings are currently hanging in the Ian Potter Centre in Melbourne. These include Shearing the Rams (see above), Coming South, MadamePfund (1887), The Sunny South (Rickett’s Point) (c.1887), “Evening, when the quiet east flashes faintly at the sun’s last look”, The Artist’s Camp Sirius Cove (see below), Mrs L.A.Abrahams, Slumbering Sea, Mentone, Louise, daughter of the Hon. L.L.Smith, and two of his cigar box paintings - By the treasury (1889).
March 28 2008 04:26 am | Famous Reproduction Art
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