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Oil on canvas Signed lower left
Painted in 1917 Provenance The artist's family; 'Mrs McCubbin, Edgewood Flats, Punt Rd, South Yarra' (inscription on the reverse) Thomas Lothian, the Melbourne publisher (information from the artist's daughter, Kathleen Mangan) Artlovers Gallery, Artarmon, Sydney (label on the reverse); purchased by Elder Smith Goldsbrough Mort Limited; transferred to Elders IXL in 1985 Portrait of Australia Collection, Foster's Group Limited Exhibited Elders IXL Collection: Masterworks of Australian Painting and French Barbizon School, Colonial, Contemporary, Continental, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2 March - 1 April 1984, cat. 18, illus. Portrait of Australia: The Elders IXL Collection, national tour, 1985-1988, cat. 27, illus. The Art of Frederick McCubbin, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and tour to other state galleries, 1991-92, cat. 54, illus. (label on the reverse) Reference Ron Radford, Elders IXL Collection: Masterworks of Australian Painting and French Barbizon School, Colonial, Contemporary, Continental, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 1984, p. 36, cat. 18, illus. Ron Radford, Pamela Luhrs et al., Portrait of Australia, Elders IXL Collection, Elders IXL, Melbourne, 1986, pp. 40-41, illus. pl. 27 Andrew Mackenzie, Frederick McCubbin 1855-1917, 'The Proff' and his art, Mannagum Press, Lilydale, 1990, pl. 67, pp. 208-9 Bridget Whitelaw, The Art of Frederick McCubbin, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1991, pp. 128-129, 135, illus. Born and brought up in inner suburban working-class Melbourne, Frederick McCubbin trained and later taught at the Gallery School, working with Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Walter Withers and others. Now best remembered for large-scale narrative scenes from bush life, he was equally interested in the urban scene. As a young art student he painted around the docklands area, whilst delivering bread from his family's bakery business. In 1907 he settled with his family in an old house, 'Carlsberg' in Kensington Road, South Yarra, with three acres of garden looking over the Yarra River and across to the semi-industrial landscape of Richmond and Burnley. This large, almost square canvas, like a light-filled window onto the landscape, was completed in the last months before McCubbin's death at the age of only 62. His children knew the painting as 'The Lime Tree' and kept it in the family collection for some years. As McCubbin's youngest daughter Kathleen recalled, 'It was painted from the side verandah of our house in South Yarra, overlooking the quarry. That has all disappeared now. In those times there were quarries beside the Yarra and an old stone crusher in Richmond, opposite our place...I would see my father sitting on the verandah in his dressing gown and black velvet beret, which he always put on when he went outside at that stage of his life, and he would be painting this picture of the Lime Tree'.(1) Trees in the Carlsberg garden included gums, fruit trees and and old peppercorn as well as this spreading European lime (tilia, or linden). McCubbin had depicted the old stone crusher at the Burnley Quarry as a site of urban toil in two large and rather detailed paintings, one of which is now in the Art Gallery of South Australia. Here in Yarra River from Kensington Road, the location has become a distant vision of colour and warm light. McCubbin's paint texture - laid on with square brushes and facetted with a palette knife - creates a brilliant interweaving of gold and rose, blue, mauve, green and silvery haze. The rich green of the foliage in the foreground is startling in its intensity. Among the 'Heidelberg School' group of Australian artists, it was perhaps McCubbin who remained most constant to their youthful manifesto 'to put only the truth down, and only as much as we feel sure of seeing'(2) Yet his painting style developed quite radically through the years. 'The older I get, the wider my interest grows in all life, colour, charm', he wrote to Roberts, 'My dear Tom, in our past work we have been too timid'.(3) (1) In Andrew Mackenzie, Frederick McCubbin, 'The Proff' and his art, Mannagum Press, Lilydale, 1990, p. 280. (2) 'Concerning 'Impressions' in Painting', letter signed by Roberts, Conder and Streeton defending the '9 by 5 Impression Exhibition' in which McCubbin also participated; The Argus, Melbourne, 3 September 1889, p. 7. (3) 27 January 1909; transcribed by Andrew Mackenzie, op. cit., p. 274.