The Victorian Artists Society, which can trace its establishment to 1856 in Melbourne, promotes artistic education, art classes and gallery hire exhibition in Australia. It was formed in March 1888 when the Victorian Academy of Arts and the Australian Artists' Association amalgamated.
The Heidelberg School was an Australian art movement of the late 19th century. It has been described as Australian impressionism.
Frederick McCubbin was an Australian artist, art teacher and prominent member of the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism.
Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton was an Australian landscape painter and a leading member of the Heidelberg School, also known as Australian Impressionism.
Clara Southern was an Australian artist associated with the Heidelberg School, also known as Australian Impressionism. She was active between the years 1883 and her death in 1940. Physically, Southern was tall with reddish fair hair, and was nicknamed 'Panther' because of her lithe beauty.
The Box Hill artists' camp was a site in Box Hill, Victoria, Australia favoured by a group of plein air painters in the mid to late 1880s who later became associated with the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism.
Clarice Marjoribanks Beckett was an Australian artist and a key member of the Australian tonalist movement. Known for her subtle, misty landscapes of Melbourne and its suburbs, Beckett developed a personal style that contributed to the development of modernism in Australia. Disregarded by the art establishment during her lifetime, and largely forgotten in the decades after her death, she is now considered one of Australia's greatest artists.
The Pioneer is a 1904 painting by Australian artist Frederick McCubbin. The painting is a triptych; the three panels tell a story of a free selector and his family making a life in the Australian bush. It is widely considered one of the masterpieces of Australian art.
Down on His Luck is an 1889 painting by the Australian artist Frederick McCubbin. It depicts a disheartened swagman, sitting by a campfire in the bush and sadly brooding over his misfortune. According to an 1889 review, "The face tells of hardships, keen and blighting in their influence, but there is a nonchalant and slightly cynical expression, which proclaims the absence of all self-pity ... McCubbin's picture is thoroughly Australian in spirit." The surrounding bush is painted in subdued tones, reflecting his somber and contemplative mood.
David Davies was an Australian artist who was associated with the Heidelberg School, the first significant Western art movement in Australia.
On the wallaby track is a 1896 painting by the Australian artist Frederick McCubbin. The painting depicts an itinerant family; a woman with her child on her lap and a man boiling a billy for tea. The painting's name comes from the colloquial Australian term "On the wallaby track" used to describe itinerant rural workers or "swagmen" moving from place to place for work. The work has been described as "among the best known and most popularly admired of Australian paintings".
One Summer Again is a 1985 Australian docudrama miniseries about the painter Tom Roberts and the Heidelberg School art movement. Set in and around the city of Melbourne in the late 19th century, the film traces Roberts' career and his relationships with other members of the Heidelberg School, including Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder and Frederick McCubbin. Their artists' camps are recreated in authentic bush settings, which one critic described as having "the soft warmth of a McCubbin painting". Film sets true to the period are contrasted with shots of contemporary Melbourne.
Charcoal burners is a 1886 painting by the Australian artist Tom Roberts. The painting depicts three rural labourers "splitting and stacking timber for the preparation of charcoal". Roberts, influenced by the Barbizon school and Jules Bastien-Lepage, would later return to the theme of rural men working in his works A break away! and Shearing the Rams.
The North Wind is a painting by Australian painter Frederick McCubbin, thought to have been painted in around 1888. The painting depicts a young family—the woman and child in a dray, the man and a dog on foot—making "its way down a bush track, buffeted by the treacherous ‘north wind’".
Maude Edith Victoria Glover Fleay (1869–1965), was one of Australia's first wildlife artists. She was known for her paintings of Australian marsupials.
May Vale (1862–1945), was an Australian painter. She was reportedly the first women to be elected a member of the Buonarotti Society.
Louis Abrahams was a British-born Australian tobacconist, art patron, painter and etcher associated with the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian Impressionism.
Bush Idyll is a 1893 painting by Australian artist Frederick McCubbin, and widely regarded as one of the finest masterpieces in Australian art history. The painting depicts a girl and boy - who is playing a tin whistle - lying on the ground near a lake.
Thomas Humphrey was a Scottish-born Australian artist and photographer who was associated with the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism.
A bush burial is an 1890 painting by the Australian artist Frederick McCubbin. The painting depicts a burial attended by a small group - an older man reading from a book, a younger man with a dog, and a woman and child. The relationships between the figures is unclear and its ambiguity and sentimental nature has seen the work described as a frontier example of the Victorian-era problem pictures. From the time the painting was shown at the Victorian Artists Society Winter Exhibition in 1890, there has been differing opinions on the story told by the work with "the critic for Table Talk magazine writ[ing] that the woman is newly widowed. In The Argus, she is the grief-stricken mother of a dead child." The Age referred to the "deceased, doubtless the wife of the grey-haired old man reading the service." The burial itself also refers to the memento mori tradition.
Like Dutch vanitas pictures of the 17th century – with their skulls and snuffed candles, and fruit and flowers past their use-by date – McCubbin is reminding the viewer of the inevitability of death. You can almost hear the words being read over the grave: “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
