Theme Artist camps

‘We went to the bush … and, as was always our ambition, tried to get it down as truly as we could.’
Roberts to Frederick McCubbin, 1914

Following his return to Melbourne in 1885, Roberts painted outdoors at Darabin and Gardiner’s creeks, and then around Box Hill, Mentone (Beaumaris) and Eaglemont (Heidelberg).

In 1886, with Frederick McCubbin and Louis Abrahams, Roberts established an artists’ camp in a patch of wild bush at Box Hill, on the outskirts of Melbourne. They pitched their tents beside the creek, among tall blue-gum saplings, ti-tree and wild grasses and worked quickly to capture an impression of the scene before the landscape changed. Telescoping in on a small segment of the bush, they depicted treescapes in which the sky is absent, and where the eucalypts are viewed in close focus, creating works that were radically different from the wide panoramic views of earlier Australian landscape painters.

In January 1887 Roberts shared a cottage on the coast at Rickett’s Point, near Mentone, with McCubbin and Abrahams. Later, the younger artists, Arthur Streeton and Charles Conder joined the group.

In 1888 Streeton took the train to Heidelberg where he was offered the use of an old weatherboard farmhouse on Mount Eagle estate. Roberts, Streeton and Conder spent two idyllic summers there from 1888 to 1890. ‘Surrounded by the loveliness 
of the new landscape, with heat, drought, and flies’, they worked hard and talked long into the night.