Tom Roberts studied at Dorchester Grammar School (today The Thomas Hardye School).
College/University
Gallery of Tom Roberts
234 St Kilda Rd, Southbank VIC 3006, Australia
Roberts entered the Victorian Academy of Arts (today the Victorian College of the Arts), receiving his scholarship to study there.
Gallery of Tom Roberts
180 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne VIC 3006, Australia
In 1874 Roberts joined the National Gallery School (later known as the National Gallery of Victoria Art School) where he became a student of Thomas Clark's classes in design.
Gallery of Tom Roberts
Burlington House, Piccadilly, Mayfair, London W1J 0BD, UK
Tom Roberts was invited to study at the Royal Academy of Arts which he attended between 1881 and 1884, specializing in anatomy and perspective.
Gallery of Tom Roberts
Parkville VIC 3010, Australia
Roberts attended anatomy classes at the University of Melbourne.
Career
Gallery of Tom Roberts
Roberts painting The Big Picture.
Gallery of Tom Roberts
Tom Roberts (seated) in his studio at Drosvenor Chambers with Arthur Streeton.
Gallery of Tom Roberts
Tom Roberts blocking in the figures in 'The Big Picture', circa 1901.
In 1874 Roberts joined the National Gallery School (later known as the National Gallery of Victoria Art School) where he became a student of Thomas Clark's classes in design.
Tom Roberts was an English-born Australian painter and photographer. He was associated with the style of Impressionism. His output was broad-ranging, as he produced landscapes, figures in the landscape, industrial landscapes as well as cityscapes. In addition, he made a small number of etchings and sculptures.
Background
Roberts was born in Dorchester, Dorset, United Kingdom, on March 8, 1856. There's some mystery surrounding his actual birthdate: his birth certificate says March 8, 1856, while his tombstone is inscribed March 9.
He was the elder son of Richard Roberts, a journalist, and his wife Matilda Agnes Cela, née Evans. Tom Roberts had two siblings.
Education
Tom Roberts studied at Dorchester Grammar School (now The Thomas Hardye School). After his father's death, Roberts's mother and his two siblings moved in 1869 to Melbourne where they lived at Collingwood. The first years were difficult for his family and Tom Roberts helped his mother to sew satchels after work.
Roberts soon became interested in art and attended the Collingwood and Carlton artisans' schools of design in 1873. In 1874 he joined the National Gallery School (later known as the National Gallery of Victoria Art School) where he became a student of Thomas Clark's classes in design. Though his occupation was meant to be a photographer, his responsibilities at Stewart's, photographers in Bourke Street, were limited to arranging backdrops and studio sets and sometimes posing for portraits.
Roberts was one of the first artists to accept a special character of the Australian landscape. Studley Park, Kew, was quite close to where Tom Roberts lived (in Johnston Street) and he decided to introduce his friend Fred McCubbin to the native flora there. Encouraged by Thomas Clark and some other teachers, Roberts entered the Victorian Academy of Arts (today the Victorian College of the Arts), receiving his scholarship to study there. Concurrently, he attended anatomy classes at the University of Melbourne.
Tom Roberts was the first prominent Australian painter to be invited to study at the Royal Academy of Arts which he attended between 1881 and 1884, specializing in anatomy and perspective. To help make ends meet he contributed illustrations to the Graphic.
Roberts travelled to Spain in 1883 accompanied by future Labor politician Dr William Maloney and fellow artist John Peter Russell, where he met Spanish artists Laureano Barrau and Ramon Casas. They introduced him to the principles of Impressionism and plein air painting. He then also visited London and Paris.
He moved back to Melbourne in 1885 to instigate a new school of painting based on plein air practice which was allied to notions of nationalism and regionalism. He started painting and sketching excursions to outer suburbs, creating camps at Box Hill and Heidelberg, where he worked along with Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin, and Charles Conder, working on representing Australia’s light, heat, space and distance. During the same period of time, Tom Roberts became especially influenced by a variety of regional groups who later formed the nucleus of the New English Arts Club in 1886.
Tom Roberts and his colleagues had a few discriminating supporters and patrons, however, the public was unimpressed and the National Gallery gave no encouragement. In 1891, when Melbourne fell into deep economic depression, the artist followed Streeton to Sydney where the National Art Gallery of New South Wales had a positive policy of acquiring Australian pictures. In October Roberts established a camp at Sirius Cove, Mosman Bay, where Streeton and A. H. Fullwood joined him.
Urging to develop a national art, in 1889 Tom Roberts started his investigation of the possibilities of painting historical subject-pictures, describing the experience of "strong masculine labour." Drawing on the basic principles of naturalism, he aimed to record historical processes, especially agricultural and pastoral methods which were fast disappearing. For three years in succession, he visited Brocklesby station in the Riverina where he painted "Shearing the Rams", which came to be considered the definitive image of an emerging national identity.
In the earlier 1890s, Tom Roberts travelled widely from Sydney in search of subject-matter, particularly to the property of his friend Duncan Anderson near Inverell. The paintings "Shearing at Newstead: The Golden Fleece" (1894) and "Bailed up" (1895) were created during this time.
In Sydney Roberts fell into close touch with J. F. Archibald of the Bulletin whom he met in 1885. In the late 1890s, Tom Roberts attempted every area of representation; his portraits of artistic, literary, and political figures were as important as his landscape and subject pictures. More than half his artworks between 1885 and 1900 were portraits. It became a means of earning a living that he much preferred to teaching.
Actually, Tom Roberts would much rather have painted more historical subjects, but they were time-consuming, expensive in materials and difficult to sell. Some of his portrait paintings were "official" and impersonal; they included portraits of friends and intimates, as well as women and girls. He painted Sir Henry Parkes, Alfred Hill, Major General Hutton, and Marshall-Hall. In 1900 he exhibited a series of twenty-three informal panel-portraits.
In 1901 he was invited to attend the opening of the Commonwealth Parliament in Melbourne and was commissioned to paint the official picture, "Minute Book". Tom Roberts was to paint 250 figures for which he was offered more than one thousand guineas and expenses. It took two and a half years to complete the work but it gave him financial security.
In 1903 he moved to England to complete the "Big Picture" (1570 sq. feet, 518 cm x 305 cm). He did not receive the patronage he expected despite his contacts with Royalty while painting the picture. Uncertain of the direction his art should follow, the painter entered a "black period" for several years. Although Roberts believed the commission to be the climax of his career, the necessity to represent accurately so many figures and the importance he placed on the task undermined his energy and weakened his eyesight.
He returned to producing portraits; one was purchased by the Royal Academy in 1910. Nevertheless, he barely made ends meet during his years in London. Tom Roberts struck up a warm friendship with Prime Minister Alfred Deakin and in 1910 he offered his services in establishing a national portrait gallery, which never opened. In 1913 Roberts held an exhibition of alpine landscapes, however, his confidence had been lacking and his hopes disappointed.
During the First World War, he enlisted in 1915 with several other Australian artists as an orderly, undertaking menial tasks, at the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth. He became corporal, and later a sergeant, in charge of the dental department, and remembered the hospital with great affection. He moved back to Australia in December 1919. There he stayed for a year and participated in exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney. The success encouraged him to return finally in 1923.
Roberts and his family settled at Kallista in the Dandenongs in a small cottage he named Talisman. He was notably impressed by the countryside there and returned to depicting small formal landscapes. His last artwork "Ring a Ring a Roses" was a landscape painted at Cremorne, Sydney, in the early 1890s.
Evening, when the quiet east flushes faintly at the sun's lasts look
Trafalgar Square
Wood Splitters
Harper's Weekly
A Mountain Muster
Woman on a Balcony
A Quiet Day on the Darebin Creek
Miss Minna Simpson
Thames Scene
The Camp, Sirius Cove
Alexander Augustus Anderson
The Artist's Camp
Still LIfe with Pomegranates
Twenty Minutes Past Three
Frances Ross
Politics
Roberts supported the notions of nationalism and regionalism, and his democratic and nationalist tendencies were reinforced in the late 1890s.
Views
Tom Roberts took in the progressing influence of artists Jules Bastien-Lepage and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.
Quotations:
"By making art the perfect expression of one time and one place, it becomes for all time and of all places."
Membership
Tom Roberts was a member of the Dawn to Dusk Club. Tom Roberts received his membership in the New English Arts Club in 1886. In 1886 he also joined the Australian Artists' Association, a body of professional painters opposing to the Victorian Academy of Arts, and the Victorian Artists' Association in 1888, becoming a committee member of both bodies.
He was also a member of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science from 1889. From 1895 to 1897 Roberts joined the Society of Artists; and largely through his eminent portrait-sitters, he gained an entrée to Sydney society.
Personality
Tom Roberts was direct, definite and straightforward in manner. He enjoyed an argument and relating anecdotes, in his younger days he was often at the centre of any party. Frederic Eggleston, a friend of the 1920s, recalled: "He was a great talker, full of fun and whims and wisdom, but he was no egotist ... He would not permit the silent listener. Every moment brought the call for active comradeship, participation in the passing of life and the enjoyment of beauty. He could not have lived without this active interchange of affection and friendship."
Roberts was a passionate reader: his love for the English romantic poets is reflected in the titles of some of his paintings. In particular, he was a fan of the works of his Thomas Hardy, with whom he had had a childhood association. "Far from the Madding Crowd" was Roberts' favourite book.
Besides, Roberts was a born leader and mentor to a lot of younger painters. He worked devotedly to promote the status of the artist and of art as a profession, demanding respect rather than patronage. Charles Conder affectionately addressed him as "friend, philosopher and guide."
Physical Characteristics:
Roberts was a slim man. His height was 178 cm. He was brown-eyed, brown-bearded, prematurely balding.
Interests
Artists
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Jules Bastien-Lepage
Connections
Roberts married Elizabeth (Lillie) Williamson, his former art-student, on April 30, 1896, at St Hilary's Church, East Kew, Melbourne. The couple settled at Balmain, Sydney, and gave birth to one son Caleb, who was born in 1898. His wife Lillie Roberts was an artist well known for her handsome carved frames. She died in 1928 and on August 27 he married her childhood friend Jean Irving Boyes at Illawarra, Tasmania.
Tom Roberts Go Forward, Dear: A Horseman's Life and Legacy
This book is in two parts, the first part, written by Nicki Stuart, provides insights into how Tom influenced people's lives with horses. In the second part, Dr Andrew McLean gives readers an understanding of why Tom's methods worked with horses, and compare with our current day knowledge about horse training theories.