Frederick McCubbin

Mr E. S. Levinson, Adelaide, 1962
Private collection, Perth

J. S. MacDonald et al., The Art of Frederick McCubbin, Lothian, Melbourne, 1916, p. 97

By 1905 Frederick McCubbin and his family were living at ‘Daneida’  in Shipley Street, South Yarra, enabling him to attend to his duties as Drawing Master at the National Gallery School. They spent as much time as they could, however, at their family home of ‘Fontainebleau’  on Mount Macedon where bushland provided the subject and the setting for numerous works, both grand and intimate. Of the former, there was the monumental The Pioneer, 1904, (National Gallery of Victoria), and Sylvan Glade, 1906 in the Bendigo Art Gallery. His major painting for 1907 was Lost (also in the National Gallery of Victoria), showing his young son Sydney posed in the early morning light of a Macedon bush setting.

While Macedon was McCubbin's chief source of inspiration, he also painted Melbourne city scenes of Swanston Street and Princes Bridge, and turned his attention to the suburb where he lived. Towards Prahran, a view looking towards the neighbouring suburb of Prahran from the backyard of the McCubbins’ Melbourne home in Shipley Street, appears to be the first of his South Yarra subjects, taking in the surrounding garden and view. Painted shortly before the artist left on his only trip to England and Europe, its style heralds his final, sparkling manner, and introduces a new subject, to be richly developed on his return. In late 1907, McCubbin moved his family to Kensington Road, also in South Yarra. Here he painted many dazzlingly colourful masterpieces of the landscape at the end of his large garden, and across the Yarra to Richmond, numbered among his finest and most impressionistic works. Towards Prahran led the way.