Tom Roberts by Humphrey McQueen

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges. Pages are sunned. Dust jacket has light creasing at edges and spine. Fading at spine. Interior and binding are also very good.

A biography of the well-known artist, referred to as the 'father of Australian landscape painting'. It provides personal details about his Tom Robert's (1856-1931) childhood in England, his subsequent immigration to Australia at the age of thirteen, his marriage and family life.

Tom Roberts' paintings of shearers, drovers and bushrangers are familiar to most Australians. In the 1890s he painted phases of the pastoral industries during the shearers' strikes. In 1901, in a monumental work, he depicted the opening of parliament. A man of wide interests he as inspired by the poems of Henry Kendall and the novels of Thomas Hardy. His love of music brought him within Melba's circles. He married late and prosperously, and had strong friendships with important figures such as Arthur Streeton and Alfred Deakin, but he also suffered black depressions.

Author Humphrey McQueen has provided a study of powerful ambitions pursued through the birth of modern Australia, a biography that combines investigative skills with the warmth and clarity of a novelist.