Tom Roberts (1856-1931)

Aliases: Thomas William Roberts; Tom (1856) Roberts

Professions: Figure painter; Painter; Portrait painter

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  TOM ROBERTS , Australian 1856-1931 SHEARING SHED, NEWSTEAD Oil on panel

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  THOMAS WILLIAM ROBERTS (1856-1931)

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  THOMAS WILLIAM ROBERTS (1856-1931)

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  TOM ROBERTS , Australian 1856-1931 ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER AT HEIDELBERG Oil on board

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Tom Roberts Biography

(b Dorchester, 9 March 1856; d Kallista, Victoria, 14 Sept 1931). Australian painter of English birth. A leader of the HEIDELBERG SCHOOL and pioneer of plein-air Impressionism in Australia, he has been described as ‘the father of Australian landscape painting’. Having moved to Melbourne in 1869, he studied at the East Collingwood and Carlton Schools of Design and the National Gallery of Victoria’s School of Art (1874–81) while working as a photographic assistant. He led sketching expeditions with Frederick McCubbin and initiated student requests for reforms at the school. Returning to England, he enrolled in the Royal Academy Schools, London, on 6 December 1881, officially recommended by Edwin Long. In the summer of 1883 he toured Spain with the painter John Peter Russell. He learnt something of French Impressionism from Spanish art students Ramon Casas and Loreano Barrau (b 1864), and then followed the latter’s advice to visit the Académie Julian in Paris. He returned to Melbourne in 1885 and the following year established the first summer camp at Box Hill with McCubbin and Louis Abrahams (1852–1903), portrayed in his painting the Artists’ Camp (c. 1886; Melbourne, N.G. Victoria). According to the painter Arthur Streeton, it was Roberts’s ‘quick perception and expression of the principles of Impressionism in the year 1886, [from which] sprang the first national school of painting in Australia’. Charles Conder later wrote to Roberts, ‘If there is any distinct school in Melbourne (I wouldn’t say Sydney) it’s entirely due to you’. His Heidelberg school nickname was ‘Bulldog’.

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