Story

The Artists' Camps

In the late 1880s a few young painters in Melbourne carried their paints out of the studio. Tom Roberts, back from London, set up camps at Box Hill and on the beach at Mentone, where he met the teenage Arthur Streeton; Charles Conder followed him down from Sydney in 1888. On a hill above Heidelberg they shared an empty farmhouse and painted the Australian summer outdoors, and their 1889 exhibition of small sketches on cigar-box lids is now seen as the start of Australian Impressionism.

Sources: Wikipedia: Heidelberg SchoolWikipedia: 9 by 5 Impression Exhibitionartgallery.nsw.gov.au

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Charles Conder was sent from England to New South Wales at sixteen to work for his uncle, a land surveyor, and soon left to draw for a Sydney newspaper. In 1888, aged twenty, he followed Tom Roberts to Melbourne.

Sources: WikipediaGetty ULAN

Pro puzzle

Arthur Streeton was an apprentice lithographer who studied painting in the evenings. By 1888 he was living at the artists' camp at Eaglemont, on a hill above Heidelberg, and his friends came to stay for months at a time.

Sources: WikipediaGetty ULAN

Pro puzzle

The artists knew each other

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In the spring of 1888 Tom Roberts left Melbourne for the Riverina in southern New South Wales, to stay with distant relatives on their property near Corowa. He came back the following year with a large canvas and worked on it there.

Sources: WikipediaGetty ULAN

Pro puzzle

The artists knew each other

Solve this puzzle and stop 2 to read how they connect.