By the middle of the 1880s Melbourne had matured into a city rich in culture and opportunity. It supported a small yet diverse artistic community, which included young, locally trained artists and internationally experienced itinerant painters who saw new opportunity in conservative Melbourne.
The NGV’s temporary closure in 2020 provided a unique opportunity to undertake the technically challenging conservation of two works by Tom Roberts, which originate from this moment of change. The artists’ camp, 1886, and Mrs L. A. Abrahams, 1888, are key examples of early Australian Impressionism that revealed a new method of painting in Melbourne while also capturing significant relationships at the centre of this movement.
During 1885, Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Louis Abrahams established a plein-air (a French term for outdoors) camp in Box Hill, then an outer eastern suburb of Melbourne. It was situated on the south side of a shallow valley carved out by what is now known as Gardeners Creek. This property was owned by a seventy-five-year-old Scottish farmer named John Houston, one of the early pioneers of the region. He referred to his property as Houston’s Paddock, however, his holdings included four allotments that amounted to 100 acres, which during the competitive land pricing of 1885 held significant value in the rapidly transforming suburb.
The semi-permanent plein air camp of tarp tents and basic living provisions became a weekend retreat for the otherwise city employed artistic trio. Many significant works were painted in and around Houston’s Paddock, including McCubbin’s Lost, 1886 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne) and Roberts’s A summer morning tiff, 1886 (Art Gallery of Ballarat), but none depict the campsite or capture the spirit of adventure like Tom Roberts’s The artists’ camp, 1886.
This intimate portrayal has become a defining image of the first Impressionists’ exploration into this semi-rural landscape. The camp is shown at its infancy nestled on a grassy landing elevated above the creek and submerged within the protective cover of gum saplings and ti-tree. Frederick McCubbin, sporting a distinctive moustache and dressed in white shirt and vest, sits with bread and lager while Louis Abrahams prepares chops in a wire frame for supper. Sleeping apparel is slung over the tent for airing; McCubbin’s coat is draped over the entrance and below in the shadows a large canvas is propped precariously against the tent pole. The scene is idyllic and bohemian and a statement of their Impressionist intent.
Through the process of conservation, The artists’ camp‘s original surface has been relieved of several discoloured layers so we may again appreciate the scene closer to how Roberts intended. The tonal highlight staged by the expansive tent is surrounded by foreground grass infused with delicate flushes of gold and pink with a border of lush green bush vegetation. Roberts used small descriptive brushwork, opaque and purposeful in its application, to lay down colour mixed on his palette with a combination of small rounded and square brushes. As with many of the Box Hill works The artists’ camp has a reserved tonalism of local colour influenced by European naturalism and particularly Jules Bastien-Lepage, the French protégé who although only a couple of years older than Roberts, had reached international fame by the time of his premature death the previous year.
Like Bastien-Lepage, the Box Hill trio sought common people for models in their compositions. During July 1885 Houston had cleared a large area of land on the opposite side of the creek, felling trees and neatly preparing 100 tonnes of firewood. Roberts made various sketches of the labourers at work resulting in several finished canvases, including Wood splitters, 1886 (Art Gallery of Ballarat, Victoria). This early interest in rural labour became a continual theme for both Roberts and McCubbin for decades to come and is central to many of their major works. A long view of Houston’s property showing the cleared paddock and its stacked wood is also seen in Roberts’s poetic nocturne Evening, when the quiet east flushes faintly at the sun’s last look, 1887–1888. Somewhere within the bush on the opposite rise is the camp while in the distance the moon rises above the Dandenong Ranges, a picturesque setting which the trio would always remember fondly.
Along with The artists’ camp, Roberts and McCubbin exhibited other pictures from Box Hill at the first exhibition of the newly formed Australian Artists’ Association in September 1886. Small in scale they were distinct for being painted plein air yet presented as finished works of their own standing. By late 1887 growing professional responsibilities limited the trio’s time spent together in the bush. During 1886 McCubbin had been appointed Drawing Master of the National Gallery School of Design and Abrahams, who was a partner in a cigar manufacturing business, had bought out his partner to become sole proprietor.
Abrahams is insufficiently credited for his involvement in the highly successful cigar manufacturing firm Snider and Abrahams. At age twenty-four he established the business several years after his father’s death, forming a partnership with Gershon Snider. By 1885 they dissolved the partnership by mutual consent and Louis took responsibility for all financial commitments. Within two years the firm had become the second largest manufacture of cigars in Melbourne and employed fifty people.
As a prosperous and eligible young Jewish businessman, it was not surprising that Abrahams was the first of the trio to become engaged and naturally Tom Roberts was asked to support him at his wedding to Miss Golda Figa Brasch. Late in March 1888 Roberts travelled by steamer to Sydney and attended the wedding at the bride’s parents’ residence Branxholme, named after the small Victorian town where her mother’s family resided. Both artists were required to make a quick return to Melbourne to prepare for the opening of Grosvenor Chambers, a newly constructed three-story building, which housed purpose-built artists’ studios in the highly fashionable top end of Collins Street. Both Roberts and Abrahams occupied the much-cherished upper floor with its superior natural light entering through large south-facing windows that also afforded views across Melbourne, St Kilda and Port Phillip Bay. The auspicious opening, attended by more than a hundred guests, showcased this ambitious new artistic project. On an easel in Roberts’s studio was Evening, when the quiet east flushes faintly at the sun’s last look, 1887–88.
Within a month Golda Abrahams arrived from Sydney and possibly the first subject painted in Roberts’s Grosvenor Chambers studio was Mrs L. A. Abrahams, 1888, a portrait undertaken to celebrate intermit friendships and presented as a wedding gift to the couple. Seated in the aesthetically decorated interior of the main studio chamber, the pale face of the thirty-year-old bride gazes back at the artist. A lacquered tray on the foreground table holds three cups of tea, including one for her husband who, like the artist, is present but not shown. Roberts has carefully constructed his professional space equally for aesthetic effect and functionality as a studio. Blue-grey muslin drapes the walls with a fold to the right revealing the door leading to the antechamber. The floor has been similarly subdued in tone to minimise reflection and ensure even illumination for the careful modelling of form. Sophisticated and fashionable ornaments such as a Japanese lantern, fan and folding screen accompany decorative vases and a much-prized wicker chair. A careful study of the flower arrangement reveals the blue tint of gum leaves that Roberts was known to have collected from Box Hill to decorate his inner-city studio.
Small in stature, Golda is dressed in black lace evening wear accessorised by gloves, gold bracelet, pearl earrings and ornamental fan. The oldest child of eight, she was born and raised in Melbourne before her family moved to Sydney. As a talented pianist she performed at concerts and gave private tuition, a virtue that would be passed onto the couple’s future children, particularly their son Fred (named in honour of Fred McCubbin) who became a talented violinist.
Like the depiction of her husband in The artists’ camp, Mrs L. A. Abrahams has undergone conservation treatment. Similarly, the surface has been cleaned of a discoloured varnish – not the first, but a later varnish applied by a restorer sufficiently long ago that it had degraded and yellowed. However, the main purpose of the conservation treatment was to undertake technical examination of the paint structure to address a disfiguring area that has hindered the painting’s appearance since it was acquired by the NGV seventy-five years ago.
Until now, a dark halo surrounded a broad region around Mrs Abrahams’s head. This separate layer was a reworking completed significantly after the original painting by an unknown hand. Although the new layer initially matched with the original paint it darkened with age and became more distinct causing confusion to Tom Roberts’s work and technical facility. Through infrared, ultraviolet and microscopic examinations it was established that Mrs Abrahams was originally depicted wearing a large headpiece that formed an unusually tall peak. High-resolution microscopy revealed sections of mechanical scratching used to physically remove this feature before the area and its surrounding region were repainted. The possible motivation for this adjustment, years after the original, is complicated and required physical and historical research to establish the best treatment path for the work.
By consulting contemporary newspaper and fashion reports from 1888, it became clear that the missing headwear worn by the new bride was the season’s high fashion for a towering toque hat, typically trimmed with lace, bows or flowers. The question remained, who removed this feature and under what direction? How are the rights of the artist and sitter best understood? Sadly, fourteen years after their marriage and creation of the painting Louis Abrahams had a tragic death and was survived by Golda and four young children. It is likely that the changes made to the painting occurred after this event and it must therefore be considered that the work may have been adjusted at the sitter’s request. Was this undertaken in mourning out of sorrow of the memory of such a specific event or perhaps in modesty to adjust the appearance of a widow observing Jewish customs of moderation? Without factual evidence the most appropriate action for the current treatment was not to make any permanent adjustment, but instead visually reincorporate the altered area to more sympathetically represent the artist’s work. This was achieved by retouching on top of the non-original paint with a reversable media separated by a varnish layer. In time this new reworking will also darken and require replacement, but maybe then more information will enable a different course of action.
Following Louis’s death, Mrs Abrahams remained close friends with Roberts and McCubbin and became an important supporter of their work. With her children she travelled widely including a year-long tour through Europe followed by trips to America and Japan eventually moving permanently to London with a daughter. Here, she was visited by Tom Roberts who would have sat in her South Kensington apartment that was decorated with his, Louis’s and Frederick McCubbin’s pictures – together again.
The transitional times of the arrival of Impressionism are now acknowledged as a tipping point in Australian art, yet this turbulent period was also challenging for the individuals involved. The friendships and support that these Australian Impressionist artists provided each other is an unmeasurable factor in the success of their art that, perhaps not understood by modern views, is enjoyed by the beauty it instilled.
Michael Varcoe-Cocks is NGV Associate Director, Conservation.
This article first appeared in NGV Magazine, issue 27, March–April 2021.