Monday 8 October 2012

Australian Impressionists - Tom Roberts



Tom Roberts (1856-1931), one of Australia's most important painters, was born in England but emigrated to Australia when he was thirteen years old.

After a study tour abroad he adopted the idea of "plein-air" (open-air) Impressionistic painting and applied its theories of light and colour to the depiction of the Australian landscape.

Along with three other artists, Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin and Charles Conder, he established what was later to become known as the Heidelberg School or Australian Impressionism. The artists set up camp at Box Hill, Mentone, and later Heidelberg in Victoria in order to practice the new Impressionistic techniques out-of-doors.

We've covered the following paintings for our artist study. All images are taken from The Athenaeum. The paintings became a little blurred when I enlarged them here, unfortunately, but I gave up trying to reduce them as I kept messing up the titles and couldn't get them matched up to the actual paintings. Technology is not my strong point.
Information on Tom Roberts: Handbook of Art by Graham Hopwood and Great Australian Paintings - a Landsdowne publication.

 Bailed Up, 1895
 
 

Break Away! 1891

 





 'A' Battery Field Artillery, NSW.  1896






 Wood Splitters, 1886






 Holiday Sketch at Coogee,  1888






In a Corner of the Macintyre, 1895


2 comments:

Dana Wilson said...

I LOVE THEM! The blues, especially, are fantastic! My mother is an artist so I was raised with a love for Impressionism anyway, but thank you for introducing me to a new artist!

Blessings~
Dana

Joyfulmum said...

Cool! we're doing Tom Roberts this term actually! I love his work!