Tom Roberts' Shearing the rams

Published by: Art Gallery of WA | 28-Mar-2019
AGWA is home for the next few months to one of Australia's iconic colonial-era paintings. Tom Roberts' Shearing the rams on loan from the National Gallery of Victoria until late July, in return for the loan of one of AGWA's much-loved paintings, Droving into the light, which features in the NGV exhibition Hans and Nora Heysen: Two Generations of Australian Art. @artgallerywa #artgallerywa #seethingsdifferently
Venue: Art Gallery of WA
Address: Perth Cultural Centre, Perth, Western Australia
Date: 13 February - 28 July 2019
Time: 10am-5pm, Wed - Mon (closed Tue)
Ticket: FREE
: https://www.facebook.com/ArtGalleryWA/
: https://twitter.com/ArtGalleryWA
: https://www.instagram.com/artgallerywa/
: https://www.linkedin.com/company/art-gallery-of-western-australia/
EMail: admin@artgallery.wa.gov.au
Call: +61 8 9492 6600
Shearing the rams hangs alongside AGWA's own Down on his luck by Frederick McCubbin, and gives you a rare opportunity to see these two great nationalistic narrative paintings side-by-side. Both works take rural subject matter as the starting point for their images of Australian identity, but Roberts presents a positive vision of the pastoral industry, far removed from McCubbin's image of a struggling pioneer.

Roberts based his painting on sketches made in a shearing shed in country New South Wales. The close observation of details and atmospheric effects, together with the sense of this being a snapshot of a fleeting moment, gives the painting an aura of 'truth', which has helped to secure its popularity for many generations. It is a great example of Roberts' statement that if art is "the perfect expression of one time and place, it becomes art for all time and of all places".

Newsletter Sign Up

Join Our Growing Community

ART NEWS PORTAL is a global crowd sourced art news feed.
Everyone is welcome to share their art and culture related news.