Armand Cabrera
He began spending his summers in the bush, in 186-87 it was at a camp at Mentone with Frederick McCubbin. In 1888 Roberts camped with Arthur Streeton and Charles Condor at Eaglemont. These artists became known as the Heidelberg School named after an area outside of Melbourne. 
He organized the five by nine exhibition with Streeton and others showing their plein air Studies on five by nine cigar box lids. Roberts was the gathering force of the group. These younger artists took Barbizon and Impressionist ideas and went directly to nature for their inspiration breaking with an older generation of painters that worked in the studio mimicking European motifs in Australian scenes. Roberts and Streeton travelled together and painted and camped near Sydney. In 1895 he became the founding member and the first president of the Society of Artists. Roberts and Streeton taught together and held exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne.
Roberts was commissioned to paint the opening of Australia’s First Federal Parliament in 1901 taking two years to complete the project. The painting is 304.5cm x 509.2 cm (10 x 16 feet). On completion of the painting Roberts entered what he called his black period having trouble with his eyesight and difficulty finding inspiration to paint. He travelled back to Europe visiting Holland, Italy and England. During the First World War he worked as an orderly in a London Hospital.
In 1919 Roberts returned to Melbourne and made painting trips to Sydney, Tasmania and New Zealand. Tom Roberts died September 14th 1931. His art would influence generations of Australian painters. Roberts’s high key impressionist paintings along with the other Heidelberg painters have defined landscape painting in Australia for over 100 years.
Bibliography
Tom Roberts
Ron Radford
1996
South Australia State Government Publications
Golden Summers Heidelberg and Beyond
Jane Clark and Bridget Whitelaw
1985
The international Cultural Corporation of Australia
Quote
It seems to me that one of the best ideas spoken to an artist is, ‘paint what you love and love what you paint’ and on that I have worked; on so it came that being in the bush and feeling the delight and fascination of the great pastoral life and work, I have tried to express it.~ Tom Roberts
You might also like to look at Hans Heysen – another iconic Aussie painter. (PS – it's Sydney).
Thanks for this great post on an artist that doesn't get enough attention. I love that image just above your Bibliography called "Allegro con brio, Bourke St West." Roberts really absorbed the best of Impressionism without losing strong tones and good drawing. I would have given anything to hang out with him and Streeton and Conder during those golden summers.
Jim,
I'm with you, those guys would have been a riot to hang out with. When they were in the bush they all went by nicknames; Roberts was 'bulldog'
I don't want to know why…
Amanda
I think he was a generation later, but I'll check him out. Also, I've gone and corrected my bad spelling; thanks for the heads up.
I thought I knew all of Robert's paintings, at least those in public collections or those published in books. But the bottom painting, of a man ? fishing in a pond, is not familiar. Do you know its title and its location?
Many thanks
Hels
Art and Architecture, mainly
Melbourne
The title is 'A Quiet Day on Darebin Creek' 1885
oil on wood panel 26.4x 34.8 cm. It was purchased by the Australian National Gallery in 1969. It was published in the Golden Summers Book
I liked the way he sneaked himself into the painting. I hear Albert Bierstadt did that once in his Hetch-Hetchy Valley piece.