Tom Roberts Exhibition, NGA

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Fri 04 Dec 2015 - Mon 28 Mar 2016

This Summer the National Gallery of Australia will be holding the Tom Roberts exhibition where visitors can experience his large scale paintings depicting Australian life in the pre-Federation years. The exhibition will showcase 130 works including paintings, pastels, drawings, prints and sculpture from over Roberts' working life, including Shearing the Rams, below.



Many years ago, too many to count, I sat in my high school art class and learnt about how Tom Roberts had represented a time of great change in Australia and how he helped create our visual national identity. It is only now, years later, that I can appreciate what I learnt.

In particular, if you have been to Parliament House and seen what is commonly called "The Big Picture" by Tom Roberts, it is something that you don't easily forget. It has a much longer name, see the painting below, however Roberts himself nicknamed it as the scale of the painting is over 3m x 5m in size. The painting depicts the opening of the first Parliament of Australia at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne on 9 May 1901.



The painting included 269 separate portraits of prominent figures, which took him two and a half years to complete. Rumours at the time suggested that Roberts had been paid by some of people in the painting to make them appear more prominent.
Roberts also honoured Henry Parkes, who had died five years before by adding an artwork of Parkes above the dais, which was not present on the day.

The "Big Picture" has been hanging in Parliament House since 1988, until now. It will be a slow process for the NGA to move this historical work which was originally painted on three flax panels and has needed to be restored over the years. It will then join the rest of the Tom Roberts artworks at the NGA for this exhibition.



Tickets are for sale through Ticketek and you can buy a ticket, or make a day out of it and include a High Tea or Bushman's Lunch in the Tom Roberts Tea Room at the Gallery. You can also order a picnic to enjoy in the Sculpture Garden outside. See here for more details.



This exhibition is held over the Summer period (December 4th - March 28th) and will be an enjoyable way to escape the heat and to appreciate the sheer scale and detail of Tom Roberts paintings in real life, as they were intended.



#school_holiday_activities
#parkes
#high_tea
#galleries
#exhibitions
#art
#tourist_attractions
#december
#january
#february
#march
!date 04/12/2015 -- 28/03/2016
%wncanberra