Thomas William "Tom" Roberts (8 March 1856–14 September 1931) was an English-born Australian artist and a key member of the Heidelberg School, also known as Australian Impressionism. After attending art schools in Melbourne, he travelled to Europe in 1881 to further his training, and returned home in 1885, "primed with whatever was the latest in art".
He did much to promote en plein air painting and encouraged other artists to capture the national life of Australia. While he is best known for his "national narratives", among them Shearing the Rams (1890), A break away! (1891) and Bailed Up (1895), he also achieved renown as a portraitist.
The Argus Saturday 28 June 1890 pp. 8-9.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article
There is little hope of people agreeing in any large extent about art. Degustibus, &c. But if there is one principle rather than another which is
universally admitted by persons endowed with common reason, it is that art should be not for an age (nor a place), but for all time (and all places).
If anything ought to be cosmopolitan and perennial, it is fine art. The perfect plastic art of Greece is absolutely world wide in its spirit, it is as good art today as in the days of PHIDIAS ; it is as appropriate art at the top of Bourke street as on the Acropolis. The smack of provinciality is as exceptionable and as distinctly a note of inferiority in art is in society.
Pictures enjoy no exception from this esthetic law. A picture must of course represent something which is seen, or is supposed to be seen, in some particular place at some particular time But if a
painter chose to depict, say a Melbourne tram-conductor hustling an agitated parcel beladen female out of the tram with one hand and ringing the starting bell with the other, even though he
were to grasp with the most absolute fidelity the conductor s mingled irritation and glee, and the feminine flurry and fear, such a painter could hardly suppose that he had produced a legitimate work of fine art. We should, it is true, be told that it was filled with the true Australian "colour" and "feeling," and that its technical execution was consummate, and these things would certainly be a great recommendation for its insertion in on illustrated encyclopedia (Art. "Trams"), or in an
advertisement of the company, but they would form no argument for setting it on high for the cultivation of the public taste, the elevation of the public sentiment, and the devout imitation of the
art-student. Something besides truth of Australian colour and fidelity of fact is required to make a picture pictorial. Whether a picture represents a scene in Gippsland or in Greenland, in Ballarat or Bethel, is not of the first moment—the essential matter is that it should be a work of art. And this
implies that, over and above its skill of execution and its truthful grasp of nature and the fact, it should have certain qualities which make it "for all who look upon it, to the utmost serviceable,
"memorable, and beautiful " A thing may be altogether perfectly depicted and yet altogether perfectly unworthy of depicting. It may be marvellously difficult and we may morely wish that it had been impossible.
These plain spoken observations are prompted by a certain sort of argument which is from time to time brought to bear upon the trustees of the National Gallery. A correspondent has again
advanced it in relation to Mr ROBERTS'S
picture of the sheep-shearing. Against that painting in particular we have nothing to say.
We have already written in appreciative terms of its execution. Our remarks are directed solely against the utterly unsound doctrine which his picture has been the cause of calling forth. The trustees are told to purchase the work because it is a true Australian shearing in the true Australian colour, and, moreover, is the only work of the kind, which reasons, taken alone, show a singularly vicious conception, first of art and second of a public gallery. The object of art is not to copy a fact. Ocular observation is not the only virtue of either artist or critic. We are sorry to disbelieve in the blessed boon of easy art-criticism by tape measure and microscope, but truth is truth. LEONARDO
DA VINCI, sane persons believe, never made the absurd remark that "the "looking glass is the master of painters" Still less is the object of art to copy an undelectable or uninstructive fact. The
object of art is to be artistic, and to be artistic is to represent something beautiful or elevating or instructive, in such a manner that, while it is true, it on page 9 is at the same time informed with
what BACON calls "a more ample“greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety."
The literal fact must pass through a transforming medium of human genius. To exactly copy a sheep-shearing is to invite us to look on at sheep shearing, and not at a work of art. We do not go
to an art-gallery to see how sheep are shorn. It is quite possible, no doubt, to throw "soul" into such an operation, even when the shearing is done by
WOLSELEY'S machine. What we are contending is that, apart from some imaginative and elevating treatment, the most perfectly precise copy that
human skill could produce would be no work of art, but only a specimen of craftsmanship. Precision of drawing and colouring are but means and notthe end. We do not look at pictures chiefly to see how clever an artist can be with his brushes. As for immense technical difficulty overcome,
why, c’est magnifique, but it may not be all Artists require to be reminded of this simple fact, which is as forgettable as it is obvious the essential question is–what is the significance, the value, the effect of the thing which is so precisely drawn and painted ? A verse composition in the most pellucid and melodious language in the world would have no justification for its existence if it merely amounted to telling us that man walks on two legs. It certainly would not be poetry. Nor is the object of an Australian art gallery to be a peep-show or
panorama of things and processes Australian The gallery exists primarily and solely for art. It is not its function to serve as an illustration book, showing in a series of plates Australian buck-jumping, land-booming, log-rolling, sheep shearing, and other interesting processes. Its object is to give to the community the enjoyment of art and the elevation which comes of art. In order to do this it must secure, as far as possible, those works which contain most of artistic excellence, an excellence not of subject alone nor of treatment alone, but of both combined. Whether such a work is produced by an Australian or a Dutchman is not of prime importance. A picture gallerymay indeed have a secondary use. It may supply models for students. We have noticed a tendency in certain
quarters to elevate this use to the first place, and therefore a tendency to desire for the gallery a collection of genre paintings, whose chief quality
may not be art, but artfulness. But whether the gallery exists for the delight of the public or for the training of students or for both, it is certainly the last institution which should encourage a policy of provinciality and protection. There is a great deal of nonsense being talked about an Aus-tralian school," who are to meditate Australian" effects "to saturate themselves with Australian " feeling, “ and to be filled with Australian "motive "–whatever that may mean. When a painter strives to represent Australian scenes, by all means let him give us truth, effect, and feeling and the rest, and, above all things, we implore him not to overlook the Australian " motive " But, in the name of common sense, do our young artists fancy that the way to paint real works of art is to parcel out nature into Australian nature and non Australian nature, neglect the latter, and study
some peculiar conventional methods of technique and treatment in the case of the former ? Do they aim at some mystic insight unknown to the outer
profane ? A Turner could paint Italy as perfectly as England. Do not our young painters see that the true artist is he who learns both to see and to paint, and who can see and paint skies and scenes with equal artistic truth, whether they be in Australia or
Timbuctoo?
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