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HUTT VALLEY

MEASUREMENTS

10.3 by 18.3 cm

Oil on wood panel, cigar box lid Signed and dated Mar 10 1900 lower right; inscribed with title 'Hutte Valley [sic]' lower left

PROVENANCE
Painted by the artist for Joseph Tripe, a fellow passenger en route to New Zealand in 1900; thence by descent in his family
REFERENCE
Topliss, H., Tom Roberts 1856-1931, a Catalogue Raisonné, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1985, cat. 342, illus. pl. 152 McQueen, H., Tom Roberts, Macmillan, Sydney, 1996, p. 453 Eagle, M., The Oil Paintings of Tom Roberts in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997, p. 121 Considered by many of his contemporaries to be the 'father of Australian landscape painting', Tom Roberts was born in England but arrived in Australia as a child. In depicting New Zealand, he was one of just a few important painters claimed across the Tasman as leading 19th-century Australian artists ? including most notably the Austrian-born Eugene von Guérard and the Italian Girolamo Nerli. Roberts grew up in Melbourne and trained first at the National Gallery School, before spending five years studying in Europe. Returning to Melbourne in 1885, 'primed with whatever was the latest in art', his overseas experience, energy and ambition were hugely influential. He became the leader of various artists' camps around Melbourne and later Sydney; was a founder member of the Australian Artists' Association; and the main driver of the now famous '9 by 5 Impressions' exhibition of 1889 ? in which many of the exhibits were painted on panels from wooden cigar boxes measuring approximately nine by five inches. Lots 28 and 29 are two of the small group of New Zealand views that Roberts painted during a visit early in 1900. They follow the format of his earlier '9 by 5 impressions' in their intimate scale; and yet each encompasses a masterly sweep of panoramic landscape. Roberts had moved from Melbourne to Sydney in 1891, having just sold his monumental Shearing the Rams. In 1894 he completed his second great woolshed subject, Shearing at Newstead, and it was with his friend the pastoralist Duncan Anderson, owner of 'Newstead', that he travelled to New Zealand in 1900. The visit was partly intended as an escape from the bubonic plague that had broken out in Sydney. However on their arrival in Wellington aboard the Monowai, on 7 March, they were quarantined by the authorities, in comfort, at Soames Island in Wellington Harbour. The 116 passengers played games, held dances and organized a journal, The Monowai Rat, with a cover illustration by Roberts and profits to aid the Boer War. On 15 March, released from the quarantine station, Roberts and Anderson stayed overnight in Wellington with fellow passenger-internee, Joseph Tripe, to whom Roberts then gave the present paintings. After visiting the South Island they rejoined Roberts's family in Melbourne on 13 May. Hutt Valley looks northward to Petone and Lower Hutt. Roberts's mastery of plein-air impressionism ? capturing on-the-spot the distinctive light and atmosphere of the landscape ? is seen at its best in these exceptionally rare New Zealand subjects.