Tom Roberts

Tom Roberts helped create a national art for Australia. His paintings of shearers, drovers and bushrangers, set in sunlit bush landscapes, became images of the country’s identity.

Born in Dorchester, England, he emigrated to Melbourne as a boy and studied there before training at the Royal Academy Schools in London. Back in Australia he set up artists’ camps outside Melbourne with Frederick McCubbin and Arthur Streeton, the start of the Heidelberg School. Shearing the Rams (1890) is in the National Gallery of Victoria, and he later painted the opening of the first Commonwealth Parliament, known as The Big Picture.

A Summer Morning Tiff and A Mountain Muster show his feeling for Australian light.