Sheep Country 1928

TOM ROBERTS (1856-1931)

Sheep Country 1928

oil on canvas on board
33.0 x 44.0 cm; 53.0 x 63.0 cm (framed)
signed and dated lower left: Tom Roberts/ 28

Provenance:
Barry Stern Gallery, Sydney, 1974
Private collection, Brisbane
Tom Silver Fine Art, Melbourne, 1983 (as Tasmanian Scene)
Private collection, Melbourne

Exhibited:
Reflections: Important Australian Artists 1830-1940, Tom Silver Fine Art, Melbourne, 20-31 March 1983 (illus. exhibition catalogue p.29, as Tasmanian Scene)

Reference:
Topliss, H., Tom Roberts, 1856-1931: A Catalogue Raisonné, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1985, vol.1, p.217, cat.653, vol.2, pl.240 (illus.)

Estimate: $40000 - 60000

Result Hammer: $110000

Painted in the summer of 1927-28, Sheep Country 1928 by Tom Roberts is from a later period of the artist’s life when his works often referred back to places, subjects and motifs that had previously inspired him.

Trawool, in country New South Wales, was where Roberts conceived his Australian realist masterpiece, Shearing the Rams 1889–90. Similarly, A Break Away! 1891 was painted during a drought and famously depicts a lone stockman trying to curb a thirst-crazed mob from stampeding downhill towards a limited supply of water. Bailed Up 1895–1927, a large figurative canvas about the exploits of bushrangers, was painted while visiting a friend at his Newstead sheep station near Inverell, New South Wales. The common denominator in each of these major undertakings was how Roberts combined a finely tuned respect for Australian rural life with realistic depictions that used subtle, pictorial effects.

Tom Roberts held an exhibition at the Fine Art Society’s Gallery in Melbourne in March 1928, followed by a showing at Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, over June and July. The exhibitions featured a selection of new landscapes of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, alongside portrait drawings. Significantly, Roberts used the opportunity to highlight the forementioned Bailed Up, a work that he had extensively reworked in 1927. Critics recognised the connection between both sets of works – the old and new – and used this as a way of restating Roberts’ importance within the development of Australian art. The quintessential settler qualities of ingenuity, resilience and successful adaptation were highlighted along with Roberts’ perceived ability to tell a truthful story with poise and without any unnecessary heroics.

The art critic for the Melbourne Age viewed Bailed Up as a ‘lesson in tone and technique’ and observed that the entire exhibition was marked by a ‘wonderful atmospheric quality … sincere consideration of form and treatment of colour … marked by … a poetic understanding of the phenomena of nature.’(1) Prominent Sydney arts writer Beatrice Tildesley perceptively commented on the works as being ‘very true to the colouring of Summertime’.(2) Meanwhile, the infamous critic J.S. MacDonald was as strident as ever, proclaiming that this was an exhibition of ‘exceptional interest’ by ‘the veritable founder of the Australian painting’.(3)

Sheep Country shares with other standout works in the exhibition, such as The Valley of the Goulburn, Granite Hills in Grey and The Crowned Hill, a focus on strong compositional arrangements rendered in poetic, tonal variations. We see in the 1928 picture the instantly recognisable white and grey belly of a gnarled and weatherbeaten trunk. The eucalypt with its umbrella foliage occupies the central foreground like a protective sentinel. It is also placed slightly off centre. This is a formal device that draws the viewer’s eye into the middle-ground and back towards the flock of sheep and expansive pasture. In the height of summer, the elongated leaves turn inwards for self-protection while the enticing pale blue of the expansive sky and mountains melt and dissipate and glow. A few native grasses remain intact, and the pasture is seen transitioning into a golden yellow, much like in Bailed Up, commenced thirty years earlier.

This late flowering of Tom Roberts’ undoubted talents was in part made possible by tragedy, as well as a more secure financial position. His beloved wife Lillie had passed earlier in January 1928. Roberts’ return visits to places they held in high esteem points to the strength of their bond and the continuance of life through the recording of nature’s hardships and bounty.

Footnotes

1. ‘Art Notes: Mr Tom Roberts’s Exhibits. Australian Landscapes,’ The Age, Melbourne, 2 March 1928, p.11
2. Tildesley, B., ‘Exhibition by Tom Roberts,’ Sydney Mail, 18 July 1928, p.2
3. MacDonald, J., ‘Tom Roberts’ Pictures: “Founder of Australian Painting”,’ The Herald, 1 March 1928, p.10

Rodney James

Rodney James is an independent art consultant who specialises in valuations, collection management, exhibitions, research and writing, and strategic planning for art galleries and museums.

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