Shearing the Rams
| Shearing the Rams | |
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| Artist | Tom Roberts |
| Year | 1890 |
| Medium | oil on canvas on composition board |
| Dimensions | 122.4 cm × 183.3 cm (48.2 in × 72.2 in) |
| Location | National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne |
Shearing the Rams is an 1890 painting by the Australian artist Tom Roberts. The painting depicts sheep shearers plying their trade in a timber shearing shed. Distinctly Australian in character, the painting is a celebration of pastoral life and work, especially "strong, masculine labour", and recognises the role that the wool industry played in the development of the country.
One of the best-known and most-loved paintings in Australia, Shearing the Rams has been described as a "masterpiece of Australian impressionism" and "the great icon of Australian popular art history". The painting is part of the National Gallery of Victoria's Australian art collection, held at the Ian Potter Centre in Federation Square, Melbourne.
Roberts modelled his painting on a shearing shed at what is now called "Killeneen", an outstation of the 24,000-hectare (59,000-acre) "Brocklesby" sheep station, near Corowa in the Riverina region of New South Wales. The property was owned by the Anderson family, distant relations to Roberts, who first visited the station in 1886 to attend a family wedding. Having decided on shearing as the subject for a painting, Roberts arrived at Brocklesby in the spring of 1888, making around 70 or 80 preliminary sketches of "the light, the atmosphere, the sheep, the men and the work" before returning to the station the following shearing season with his canvas. Roberts' work was noted by the local press with reports of him "dressed in blue shirt and moleskins ... giving the last finishing touches to a picture in oils about 5ft by 4ft."
Art historians had previously thought Roberts completed most of the painting in his Melbourne studio, using the sketches drawn in his time at Brocklesby. In 2003 however, art critic and historian Paul Johnson wrote: "Tom Roberts spent two years, on the spot, painting Shearing the Rams". New evidence was brought to light in 2006 that suggested that Roberts painted much of the work en plein air at the shearing shed itself. In 2006, The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) conducted a scientific examination of paint left on a piece of timber salvaged from the now-destroyed shed, where it was thought that Roberts cleaned his brushes. The study confirmed that the paint, in a number of different shades, precisely matched the paint used in the painting. The senior curator of art at the NGV, Terence Lane, believes this is strong evidence that much of the work was done on location: "For me, that's evidence of a lot of time spent in that woolshed ... all those paint marks and the selection of colours indicates he spent so much time en plein air".
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