Tom Roberts

The artist
John Young, Sydney; gift from the above circa 1920s
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
Private collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above in 1962

Helen Topliss, Tom Roberts 1856-1931: a catalogue raisonné (2 vols.), Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985, vol. I, p. 88, vol. II, plate 10 (illus.) (as 'Untitled. Thames Landscape')

There is no cracking or scratches. This work has most likely been cleaned. UV inspection suggests no retouching/repainting on this work.
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Paradoxically, the foundation of Tom Roberts' reputation as 'the father of Australian landscape painting' lay in his enthusiastic absorption of European art while studying in London in the early 1880s. Fired by the examples of Camille Corot and Jean-Léon Gérôme, John Constable and James Whistler, Laureà Barrau and Ramón Casas, Roberts brought European plein-air sketch practice back with him to Australia. Perhaps more significantly, he also introduced the close attention to tonal relations of Jules Bastien-Lepage and his Naturalist followers in France and Britain. When applied to the local light and landscape, these two elements combined to create a new, fresh Australian painting; as Streeton put it, 'The first sight of his pictures painted in the open air with all the grey of Nature was a revelation...'¹

While the grandeur and sentiment of his great National Pictures such as Shearing the rams (1888-1890, National Gallery of Victoria), The golden fleece (1894, Art Gallery of New South Wales) and Bailed up (1895, Art Gallery of New South Wales) made them Australian icons, Roberts' crisp, confident and subtle on-the-spot impressions remain amongst his finest achievements, and sketch landscapes from the 1880s and 1890s are keenly sought after by collectors.

This particular panel is a fine example. Until now the work has been something of a puzzle picture. In her catalogue raisonné entry on the work, Helen Topliss accurately described the work's 'Whistlerian composition and tonality. The water is muted blue and the sky grey-pink.'²  Perhaps influenced by an opinion of the collector and dealer Leonard Voss Smith, Toplis then went further and proclaimed it to be a London subject, possibly Thames by Westminster, dating it to the artist's student years in England, around 1884.

However, there are significant problems with this identification. To begin with, the topography is wrong: the land behind the water is rather more elevated and rises more rapidly than that of London's river banks. Moreover, the ground itself is a fawn-pink colour, much more Sydney sandstone than gunmetal Thames basin clay. These general characteristics were noted by the artist Lloyd Rees, who said that the view was of 'Sydney Harbour near Balmain, without a shadow of a doubt – I know that area very well. Those buildings, their warm tones, the shoreline and the grey blue is certainly not the Thames, nor is the light, it's just a pearly grey day on the harbour...'³

Recent research has more tightly pinpointed a likely location: the south side of Cockatoo Island, with the cranes of Fitzroy Dock to the right and the chimney of the 1884 Sutherland Dock power station on the left. The painting's disposition of cranes, chimney and buildings would be consistent with a view from around Elkington Park, Balmain, the suburb where Roberts and his new wife Lillie lived after their marriage at the end of April 1896. Interestingly, at the exhibition of the Society of Artists in September of that year Roberts showed the major (50 guinea) painting Sydney at eventide – from old Balmain, as well as a small, 5 guinea sketch simply (and in this context rather intriguingly) titled Study in grey.

More objective and telling confirmation of the work's Australian, 1890s origins has lately been provided by infra-red photography, which has revealed a hitherto unrecorded, very faded and tape-obscured inscription⁴ on the reverse bottom centre of the painting: 'Sydney Harbour / Tom Roberts.'

We are most grateful to Kathleen Hamey and the Balmain Association and to Michael Varcoe-Cox for their assistance in cataloguing this work.

1.  Arthur Streeton, handwritten text for a lecture given in 1920 or 1924, quoted in Mary Eagle, 'A painter making himself', in Ron Radford (ed.), Tom Roberts, Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia in association with Art Exhibitions Australia, 1996, p. 44
2.  Helen Topliss, Tom Roberts 1856-1931: a catalogue raisonné, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 88
3.  Transcription of tape-recorded conversation between  Lloyd Rees and the present owner, 1975
4.  The inscription may be autograph; the distinctive cross formation of the 't' in 'Roberts' is typical of the artist's hand.