Tom Roberts

Readers note: This is an excerpt from the 200 Treasures exhibition catalogue, developed in 2017. This content was written as a brief biography on why this person was included in the exhibition.

Tom Roberts was one of the leading artists of the nationalist painting
group the Heidelberg School, based in Melbourne. This artistic movement was influenced by French bohemianism and the plein-air method, where artists painted outdoors paying close attention to light and colour. Roberts and others in the group focused on the Australian landscape and were hailed as the first artists to see Australia with Australian eyes.

The Heidelberg School coincided with the Federation movement, and the upsurge in nationalism was deeply reflected in their works. Some of Roberts’s most famous works, Shearing the Rams (1890), A Break Away! (1891) and Bailed Up (1895), reflected a fascination with male rural workers, or, in the case of Bailed Up, the myth of gentlemen bushrangers. Roberts was, however, not an Australian by birth.

He was born in Dorset, England, in 1856 and emigrated with his mother and two siblings in 1869 after the death of his father. They settled in Collingwood, Melbourne.

The 13-year-old Roberts was exposed to the artistic activities in the city at the time and began studying art in 1873. His work came to the attention of artistic masters Louis Buvelot and Eugene von Guérard, who awarded him a prize for landscape painting.

In 1874, he joined the National Gallery School where he met fellow artists Frederick McCubbin and Arthur Streeton, among others, with whom he began artist camps that gave rise to the Heidelberg movement. Although his major interest was landscape painting, Roberts also produced works depicting Melbourne urban scenes and many commissioned works for the lucrative portraiture market. His reputation as Australia’s greatest living artist was assured when he painted the opening of Federal Parliament in 1901. This immense work displayed his skill in portraiture and his mastery of detail and, like so many of his other works, is iconic.