Wood splitters

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Wood splitters
Tom Roberts - Wood Splitters, 1886 2.jpg
Artist Tom Roberts
Year 1886
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensions61.4 cm× 92.3 cm(24.2 in× 36.3 in)
Location Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat

Wood splitters is a 1886 painting by the Australian artist Tom Roberts. [1] The painting depicts three rural labourers "splitting and stacking timber for the preparation of charcoal". [1] 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 . [1]

Roberts painted the picture from sketches made at a camp he made with Frederick McCubbin at Box Hill, then a rural locality east of Melbourne. [1]

The painting was acquired by the Art Gallery of Ballarat in 1961. The work was stolen from the gallery in 1978. A ransom was paid the following year for the safe recovery of the painting from a park in Sydney. [1]

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Tom Roberts: Wood splitters". Australian collection. Art Gallery of Ballarat. Retrieved 17 September 2013.